Professional services firm KPMG won both Reporting Accountants awards during the 15th annual DealMakers Gala Awards Banquet on 16 February at the Sandton Convention Centre. A broadly smiling CFO South Africa MD Graham Fehrsen handed the two prizes (Deal Flow & Deal Value) to KPMG's Corporate Finance MD John Geel, in the presence of DealMakers director Marylou Greig.
Before handing out the Reporting Accounting awards, Graham spoke to the 400 attending M&A specialists for financial institutions, law firms and advisory firms about CFO South Africa, the leading community for finance professionals in South Africa. He later also commended other winners on the evening, including Standard Bank, Webber Wentzel and individual Dealmaker of the year John Gnodde, who has done some incredible M&A work with his company Brait.
As an awards sponsor, CFO South Africa hosted a table with a number of remarkable CFOs, like Sharon Horsten (CFO Sub-Saharan Africa at Thomson Reuters), Sean Doherty (CFO Standard Bank Investment Banking) and Imraan Soomra (CFO of Oceana). "CFOs often play a crucial role during M&A transactions and I feel they are often the real dealmaker-heroes," said Graham.
CFO Awards judge Christo Els received one of the awards on behalf of his firm Webber Wentzel. Join Christo on 12 May 2016
The evening was a light-hearted affair with dozens of awards being handed out to the M&A service industry and stand-up comedian Loyiso Gola providing the entertainment. The Deal of the Year was predictably won by Anheuser-Busch InBev's acquisition of fellow beer brewer SAB Miller, while many service providers around that deal shared the spoils with other awards. The PE Deal of the Year award went to Ethos, for its sale of plumbing and sanitary-ware company Plumblink to Bidvest.
All attending guests received a free CFO Magazine and the DealMakers magazine, which includes an overview of CFO South Africa's 2016 events and the much-anticipated Finance Indaba Africa.
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