Sim K. Katende

Sim K. Katende is a Partner at the firm and serves as the Head of its Banking & Finance, Corporate & Commercial, Energy, Oil & Gas, M&A, Capital Markets and TMT practices. His practice focuses on Mergers and Acquisitions.

Sim is widely acknowledged and internationally recognised as one of the leading transactional lawyers in East Africa. He boasts over 25 years' multi-jurisdictional practice experience, having worked in New York in the USA, South Africa and Uganda.

Sim works collaboratively with global and emerging corporate leaders to execute complex transactions and achieve tax-efficient growth. He provides high-level insight into all aspects of complex transactions and brings clarity to time-sensitive and nuanced deals and issues.

He has worked closely with most of the leading commercial law firms in East Africa, South Africa and the United Kingdom, including most of the magic circle firms, and has developed excellent working relationships with many of the key transactional lawyers in these firms. He is known for strengthening bargaining positions and moving deals forward by understanding the interests of all parties and all moving parts of complex transactions.

Sim has structured, negotiated and executed landmark multimillion-dollar deals and financial transactions in Uganda and East and sub-Saharan Africa in the fields of capital markets, banking and finance, technology, media and telecommunications, insurance, private equity, PPPs and project finance, energy, oil and gas, and mergers and acquisitions. Having handled some of the largest and most cutting-edge transactions in Uganda, Sim has become a go-to advisor for several local and multinational companies with new and unusually complex or large-scale transactions in the region.

Sim is licensed to practise law as an Attorney and Counsellor-at-law in the State of New York, as well as an Advocate, Commissioner for Oaths and a Notary Public in Uganda. He is also certified as a Commercial Arbitrator and Mediator by the Ugandan Center for Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution (CADER).

Sim sits on the boards of local entities of several multinational companies in Uganda. He is a member of the Uganda Law Society's Continuing Legal Education Committee and an external examiner and guest lecturer at the Law Development Centre in Kampala, Uganda. He also spends a large amount of time mentoring and training young lawyers.

He holds a Master of Laws (LLM) with Distinction from Columbia University (1999), where he was a Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and was awarded the Sidney O. Friedmann Fellowship, and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) (Hons) from Makerere University (1998), where he was twice a Dean's List Scholar, winner and Best Oralist at the Third All Africa Moot Court Competition, President of the Makerere Law Society and Founding President of the Federation of East African Law Students Association (FEALSA).

He has consistently been internationally ranked as a Star Band 1 Transactional Lawyer by Chambers and Partners Global Guide to the World's Leading Lawyers, which has described him as a "distinguished corporate lawyer" with "particularly extensive experience in M&A and capital markets," and has praised his "brilliant mind," describing him as "approachable, agile and a great lawyer," and as "one of the most brilliant lawyers in the market."