DLA Piper South Africa was named as the third most active South African General Corporate Finance legal advisors at the annual Ansarada DealMakers Awards, held on 19 February 2026. DealMakers tracks and records M&A activity across Africa, and  are based transactions involving JSE-listed entities and unlisted South African entities.

Over the past 12 months, DLA Piper has worked on several of the largest capital markets deals, demonstrating the firm's ability to advise on complex and high-value capital market transactions. These include advising Cell C Limited (Cell C) and Cell C Holdings Limited (Cell C Listco) in a pre-listing restructuring between Cell C and its shareholders, aimed at optimising Cell C’s capital structure and balance sheet in preparation for the listing of Cell C Listco on the main board of the JSE; advising Premier Group, a JSE-listed FMCG company, on its proposed acquisition of all the shares in Rhodes Food Group, a JSE-listed food producer, in exchange for new shares in Premier; and advising the joint global coordinators comprising of Investec Bank, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, on a USD1.5 billion accelerated bookbuild by Ibex Investment Holdings (formerly Steinhoff International) of 1.04 billion shares in Pepkor Holdings.

Location Head of Corporate, Peter Bradshaw said "We are incredibly proud to have acted on these transactions. Our involvement in these bears testament to the depth of our integrated, cross-practice capabilities and reaffirms the market's confidence in our ability to seamlessly deliver high-quality advice."

Johannes Gouws, Country Managing Partner, added: “Receiving this recognition reflects the scale of our offering and the consistent improvement of our position in the South African legal market. It also underscores why DLA Piper has for the past 16 years maintained the top M&A position globally in the annual MergerMarket M&A rankings by deal volume, as well as for the past two years across Africa and the Middle East."