Team lead - Deal origination

Job Title: Team Lead- Deal Origination, Africa Trade Advisory

Client: Oakwood Green Africa

Industry: Financial Services

Location: Ghana

Job Purpose/Summary

The Team Lead – Deal Origination, Africa Trade Advisory has the responsibility to originate transactions, develop new and maintain relationships with existing clients and customers, and generally provide trade support to clients and partners. The role requires frequent travel and high-level engagements.

Key Functions/Responsibilities

• Responsible for originating new client business/trade finance transactions, building a pipeline of businesses, closing sales, and managing relationships.
• Assist in the preparation of annual Intra-African Trade Facilitation Plans, deriving from the Group’s business objectives focused on facilitating trades and investment flows into and across Africa thereby helping African governments and businesses to secure needed capital for development.
• Build and maintain productive relationships with clients and customers, working closely with senior management to develop strategies that will help the businesses gain competitive advantage, bespoke tailored advice, strengthen rapport, and enable quick responses to their inquiries.
• Seek out and connect trade-related needs with solutions within Africa.
• Facilitate intra African exports and imports among African Countries
• Facilitate the conduct of business and industry research for both deal origination and transaction analysis, including the preparation of detailed industry and sector analysis for project opportunity assessment and prospecting. Foreign trade and global economy research also use insights to advise and guide trade facilitation decisions for clients.
• Assist in all aspects of the ongoing lifecycle maintenance of trade transactions until maturity (including but not limited to writing credit, payments, reconciliations, trade checking, investigations, deal reviews etc).
• Review, engage, and work with existing and potential clients to determine their needs and offer required advice on how to achieve set business goals and targets. Such advice includes providing clients with information about various fundraising /trade structuring options, including helping the clients choose appropriate products that fit their business needs.
• Participate and contribute to the whole range of advisory services offered to our clients, including Merger & acquisition mandates (buy-side and sell-side), Financial due diligences (buy-side and sell-side, in the context of M&A transactions), Valuation (Business, Debt, Portfolio etc.), Trade, Treasury and general cross-selling opportunities.
• Maintain ongoing contacts and relationships with clients to learn about their business and funding needs, as well as helping them make informed financial decisions.
• Review and filter all transactions by performing basic-level analysis to determine if the transaction is worth the execution time of the team.
• Maintain a database of trade-focused institutions and a list of their products.
• Coordinate and execute partnership mandates with Afrexim Bank’s Mansa, Papss, and IATF initiatives in countries where we have a presence.
• Partnership Origination (Funding and Technical Partners)
• Scan for and arrange attendance for business events that can be used to originate business and meet existing clients/partners
• Coordinate internal and external events. E.g. trade roadshows, trade seminars, breakfast meetings
• Ensure self and team members maintain a deep knowledge of relevant products and services, both Oakwood and partner products, and can educate clients at the basic level.
• Work together with the Execution Team to ensure flawless execution of deals using specialists to support across the different specialist areas.
• Participate and contribute to the whole range of advisory services offered to our clients, including Merger & acquisition mandates (buy-side and sell-side), Financial due diligences (buy-side and sell-side, in the context of M&A transactions), Valuation (Business, Debt, Portfolio, etc.), Trade, Treasury and general cross-selling opportunities.
• Support with writing of credit

Qualifications & Experience

Required:

• Relevant bachelor’s Degree.
• Possession of an MBA (or master’s degree) is an added advantage.
• Minimum of 8+ Years relevant experience in Corporate Finance, Sales, and Relationship Management in a financial institution or business advisory firm.