Cobus Visagie

Cobus Visagie (born 31 October 1973) is a former South African rugby union footballer who played at tighthead prop.

Visagie attended the famous Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch and then studied Auditing and Accounting at Stellenbosch University, where he also played for Maties (Stellenbosch University) and Western Province Rugby. He earned the nickname 'Drieman' (three man) during his school rugby days because of his dominance at tighthead prop (the number three position in rugby union) and his love of the scrum.

Cobus was a Coopers&Lybrand bursary holder and finished his Bachelor of Commerce with Honours, majoring in Accounting and Audit at Stellenbosch University in 1996. He worked seven years for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a Chartered Accountant, whilst playing professional rugby for Western Province and the Stormers from 1997 to 2003.

He won three Currie Cups with Western Province Rugby, the last in 2001 with a home win (at Newlands, Cape Town) over the Natal Sharks. He also earned 43 Super 12 caps with the Stormers. He earned 29 caps for his country and was the cornerstone of the Springbok team that reached the 1999 World Cup Semi Final. He was selected to the team of the tournament with fellow Sprinkbok frontrow [Os du Randt].

Visagie moved to the United Kingdom to play for the English Premiership club Saracens after being passed over for the 2003 World Cup Springbok squad.

He played 121 games for Saracens and was voted into the Guinness Premiership team of the season for three consecutive years. He also represented the Barbarians (8 caps), World XV (3 caps) and the Southern Hemisphere XV that played in the Tsunami Relief game at Twickenham, before retiring from professional rugby in May 2009.

After retirement from his professional rugby career he joined Premier Team Holdings Limited as Commercial Director of the Group of four companies based in the United Kingdom.

In 2011, Cobus was appointed Principal for Africa at Templewood Merchant Bank, where he was responsible for providing access to capital and investment opportunities, with a specific focus on Real Estate & Infrastructure, Renewable Energy and Private Equity.

The following year, Cobus co-founded Africa Merchant Capital, based in London to focus exclusively on corporate finance advisory, private equity deal origination and syndication in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa Merchant Capital is a boutique corporate finance advisory firm focused exclusively on Sub-Saharan Africa mid-market Private Equity ($10-$100m) and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The company provides services in capital raising, structuring, due diligence and transaction preparation; partial and complete sales/exits, M&A target identification and deal origination.

Cobus is also a qualified European Private Pilot and a RFU Level 3 Rugby coach.