Conrad Marais is a partner in Trinity.  His practice area is Corporate and Project Finance with a focus on corporate/commercial transactions in emerging markets, notably Africa (including M&A, joint ventures, development agreements and strategic alliances) and project finance. His experience ranges across a number of sectors including infrastructure (particularly power and transport), resources (mining and oil & gas) and agriculture.

Conrad is recognised in various legal publications including Chambers Global (described as a “standout individual” for his projects work in Africa) and the 2017 Australian Financial Review’s Best Lawyers listing of Australia’s top project finance lawyers.

As one of the early members of the team that established Trinity in 2006, Conrad joined the partnership in London before establishing an office of Trinity in Australia focusing on the significant number of Australian companies with resources and infrastructure projects in emerging markets. This allowed Trinity to bridge a critical relationship between resources and infrastructure, particularly in areas such as captive power to mining projects.

Conrad has led transactions on the corporate and development aspects of projects such as:
– the $500M Amandi gas IPP in Ghana
– $100M fundraising for an African infrastructure developer
– acquisition by a significant ASX listed mining company of a gold mine in Niger
– the 130MW Freetown power project in Sierra Leone
– the APSD 60MW biomass power project in Ghana
– advising Macquarie on the sale of an interest in an airport in Tanzania
– several solar power projects in Nigeria
– advising management on its buy-out of CEC in Zambia.
– the 300MW Lake Turkana wind project in Kenya
– fundraising, structuring & implementation of Aldwych International
– a captive solar and thermal project for a mine in Mali
– a $500M combined sugar, ethanol, power project in Tanzania

In addition to his position with Trinity, Conrad was seconded as General Counsel to African power developer, CEC Africa. The Company has developed power projects in Nigeria, Namibia, Sierra Leone, DRC and Zambia.

Conrad started his career with the international firm Allens Linklaters (as it is now known) in its Energy, Resources and Infrastructure team in Perth, Australia and Corporate team in Melbourne, Australia, working with key energy and resource companies such as Rio Tinto. He then joined the Corporate Team (and its Energy sub-group) at Freshfields in London advising on a broad range of cross border M&A transactions, joint venture and energy and infrastructure projects in a number of emerging markets.