Dawie van der Merwe

Dawie van der Merwe

Director: Business Restructuring

Executive summary

Experience

Although Dawie has extensive experience in attending to the daily administration of deceased and insolvent estates and in particular liquidated companies and corporations his philosophy to financial distress has always been to salvage and rescue as many businesses as possible. Prior to the introduction of formal business rescue legislation he has managed to successfully restructure many liquidated businesses and returned them to normal operations. These included businesses in just about every sector of the economy, from retail, to manufacturing, mining and financial services. So from the very outset of the change of legislation in South Africa in 2011, when the Companies Act 71 of 2008 came into Law on 1 May 2011, Dawie, together with Mr. Hans Klopper have been at the forefront of restructuring companies in terms of the newly promulgated Chapter 6. Since May 2011 they have been fortunate to have attended to some of the most complex and unprecedented restructuring projects in South Africa.

He commenced his Articles with Hofmeyr Attorneys (now known as Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr) in 1997. He was admitted as an Attorney in 1999 and with a keen interest in Insolvency Law.

He joined the Insolvency and Restructuring team at Hofmeyr Inc. (Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr today).


Qualifications

  • B Comm (Law)
  • LLB
  • Diploma in Insolvency Law and Practice (“AIPSA”)
  • Short course on Business Rescue Decision Making, at the University of Pretoria.

Other

As an admitted attorney, Dawie is a member of the Law Society and has been on the panel of the Master of the High Court as an insolvency practitioner since 1998. He presently serves on the national board of SARIPA, (the South African Restructuring and Insolvency Practitioners Association), is a registered Senior Business Rescue Practitioner with CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Property Commission) and we is a member of INSOL International (an international association of insolvency and restructuring professionals).