The posting
Investment Associate Principals (IAPs) lead or support every stage of the SME investment process. This particular opportunity sits within one of our SME development funds, which provides predominantly debt funding to majority black-owned SMEs within the industrial and corporate supply chains of its investors (a pooled fund plus multiple ring-fenced investor mandates, with typical deal sizes of R1m–R10m). Significant activities include originating and screening transactions, evaluating investment opportunities, managing due diligence, structuring and negotiating debt (and, where relevant, structured) transactions, and supporting post-investment management, credit control and work-outs to preserve capital and drive impact, with limited senior support. Highly successful IAPs fundamental investment and credit analysis, apply sound business judgment, engage credibly with senior stakeholders and investors, and manage complex, fast-moving processes. IAPs play a key role in investor client relations as well as directly and indirectly leading junior team members. They are self-starters, feel a strong sense of ownership of their work and have excellent team, leadership and interpersonal skills. Key Responsibilities: Deal origination Build and maintain a network of deal sources within investor supply chains and the ESD / SME ecosystem that regularly introduce high-quality, mandate-aligned opportunities into the fund’s pipeline. Lead Fund marketing initiatives, including representing the Fund at internal and external networking events, SME open days and conferences. Deal evaluation Manage a pipeline of potential investments at different stages of the screening process and support team members in managing their pipelines. Direct team members in crafting high level investment thesis and, together with financial evaluation and investment structuring, motivate transactions to the rest of the deal team. Build strong relationships with Founders of early stage companies. Project management Executing all of the above within a strongly project managed work process is essential. Investment process improvement Embrace the ethos of continuous improvement in identifying and driving initiatives to enhance or re-engineer existing processes to increase efficiency in the deal-making process. Investor Relations Support the Fund Head in investor client relations. Lead investor Operations Committees and support the Fund Head by owning the dealmaking reporting at investor Steering Committees and Fund Board meetings. Deal execution Due diligence: Plan and execute commercial and financial due diligences with multiple workstreams. Undertake focused research and analysis as part of the due diligence process to understand the growth potential of a small business. Analyse historical financials and conduct financial modelling, affordability and credit analysis to structure the funding. Review team outputs and prepare high quality investment reports. Build strong rapport with the Investment Committee and successfully present investment opportunities to them. Closing: Managing the process of: Drafting, negotiation and execution of legal agreements ensuring they accurately reflect the approved term sheet. Effective transaction hand-over process and on-going collaboration with the Portfolio Management team. Governance and record keeping leveraging team member support. Teambuilding Develop Investment Associates and Analysts through coaching, mentoring and training on technical topics. Requirements Qualifications: At least a graduate degree, preferably with a technical and / or quantitative emphasis (finance, engineering, accounting, law, etc) An MBA, CA(SA), CAIA or CFA degree would be advantageous Experience: 5+ years across the full deal lifecycle, with a bias toward debt / credit investing or lending to SMEs (origination through to recovery, exit or write-off), or in Tier 1 corporate finance / business consulting with balanced strategy and operations exposure. Other experience, especially within Enterprise & Supplier Development (ESD), development finance or impact investing focused on early- and growth-stage SMEs, and within industrial or mining supply chains, will add significant weight to the application.
