Fiona N. Magona

Independent Director

Fiona is a Partner in the Corporate Advisory team at MMAKS Advocates. A high performing lawyer with over 15 years’ experience, in multi-jurisdictional commercial legal practice spanning across corporate M&A, Private Equity, Energy, Mining and Natural Resources, Projects & Infrastructure, and general corporate commercial, regulatory and investment advisory. Fiona has consistently been ranked as a highly regarded lawyer by IFLR 1000, and also described as very efficient pragmatic and with great client management skills by Chambers Global. She has expertise in providing legal and strategic commercial advice on cutting edge transactional work and cross border acquisitions in sectors like telecom, broadcasting, insurance, banking, manufacturing, mining and energy. She routinely handles legal due diligences, negotiates transactional and operational contracts, advises on compliance issues, licensing regimes, and issues affecting local and foreign investors. Fiona holds a LLM in commercial law from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), and has previously worked with a top tier law firm in Johannesburg South Africa, where she also served a 6 (six) months placement at a former FTSE 100 mining company, Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (Johannesburg). She has also served a placement with Slaughter and May, a magic circle law firm in London. Fiona is currently leading the MMAKS team in advising Africa Finance Corporation with respect to the financing of the development of a greenfield refinery, pipeline to transport the refined crude oil, an on-site storage facility and a separate receiving stor-age terminal The deal is complex and the first of its kind in Uganda as it involves development of an oil refinery, oil pipeline and oil storage terminals in Uganda and therefore it requires comprehensive review, of most and if not, all the current legislation in Uganda to ensure that the necessary regulatory requirements are complied with. (CONFIDENTIAL). Fiona just recently advised I&M Holdings Limited on its proposed acquisition of 100% (one hundred percent) of the share capital of Orient Bank Limited, one of the leading banks in Uganda. This included including the structuring of the transaction and extensive regulatory advice under the banking laws, procuring the relevant regulatory approvals, drafting the transaction documents and managing and coordinating the entire transaction (CONFIDENTIAL). Fiona works closely with international law firms like Allen & Overy, Latham and Watkins, Hogan Lovells, Webber Wentzel and Linklaters LLP , Addleshaw Goddard, Slaughter and May and Nairobi based Anjarwalla and Khanna Advocates. Her clients highly recommend her in handling M&A, Private Equity and Minerals, Oil & Gas transactions.