Folake Elias-Adebowale is a corporate partner and a member of the firm’s M&A, private equity and oil and gas teams. Her specialisations include cross-border and domestic equity and asset acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, strategic alliances, restructuring, investments, financing for energy, manufacturing and industrial projects and employment matters.

Her transaction highlights include the acquisition by a consortium of private equity, DFI and other investors of a substantial majority stake in one of Nigeria’s oldest banks; a pan-African financial institution and various domestic pension funds on the Nigerian aspects of their investment in Nigeria’s first indigenously developed and managed infrastructure fund; advising multinational conglomerates on various acquisitions, divestments and restructuring transactions involving companies in the FMCG, food and beverage, manufacturing, telecommunications, construction, agro-allied, insurance, insurance brokerage and financial sectors; advising on the establishment of a 500-hectoliter brewery; advising syndicated debt providers on one of the largest ever non-petroleum syndicated debt facilities in Africa; and advising financiers of various projects including a greenfield cement plant, a steel fabrication plant, a regional independent power project and the largest indigenous operator in the Nigeria petroleum sector.

Folake sits on the board of the Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, Nigeria (PEVCA) and co-chairs its legal committee. She is also a member of the legal and regulatory council of the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA), the legal and regulatory committee of the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA), and the joint committee established by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and PEVCA to review private equity regulations in Nigeria.

She headed the legal and regulatory sub-committee of the Federal Minister for Industry Trade and Investment’s Nigerian Private Equity and Venture Capital Development project established to make recommendations for boosting private equity and venture capital activity in Nigeria. Her regulatory review and advocacy practice has also included assisting with the review of, and preparation of draft legislation for the downstream gas sector.

She has presented papers and conducted seminars on private equity, investment and employment law. She has authored and co-authored articles published in The Lawyer, various IFLR publications, and the International Law Office’s Energy and Natural Resources Newsletter. She sits on the board of several companies.

Folake is ranked by Chambers Global for corporate M&A and private equity, the International Financial Law Review for acquisitions, and regarded as one of the world’s leading practitioners in the fields of M&A and Governance, Energy, Natural Resources & Mining, Project Finance, and, Capital Markets by Who’s Who Legal. She is commended in The Lawyer’s Africa Elite Private Equity Report.