Werner van der Westhuizen

Werner partners with the people who define private capital. He advises emerging managers as they build investment platforms, established sponsors as they scale and the institutional and strategic investors that anchor them. His legal and strategic counsel is tailored to both the transaction at hand and the client’s enduring business vision. He builds structures with his clients that align incentives and capital, traditional or bespoke. A former disputes lawyer in South Africa whose scholarship has been cited by the Constitutional Court, Werner brings an interdisciplinary, cross-border perspective to complex dealmaking.

Werner advises across the full arc of private capital formation. He has represented sponsors in raising billions of dollars spanning venture capital, buyout, credit, real estate, infrastructure and permanent capital through a range of vehicle types, from commingled funds and separately managed accounts to co-investment vehicles, evergreen structures, joint ventures and bespoke arrangements. He advises managers throughout the life cycle of their investment advisory businesses – from formation and operation through to scaling and succession, including crafting partnership and voting arrangements, structuring team economics and incentives, raising strategic capital, reorganizing and winding down, and navigating Securities and Exchange Commission compliance and regulatory matters. On the investor side, he has represented family offices, institutional investors and strategic capital providers in deploying capital into investment funds and permanent capital structures and providing liquidity in secondary market transactions.

Before joining Cooley in San Francisco, Werner was an associate at global law firms in South Africa, New York City and San Diego.