Change has been the only constant at the South African corporate firm Bowman Gilfillan since apartheid ended in 1994. Ten years ago, says the firm’s corporate head, Ezra Davids, he was the firm’s only black partner. Today, Davids, 48, has a lot of company: About a quarter of Bowman’s partners are from the country’s previously disadvantaged groups—black, South Asian, and mixed-race.
Davids, raised in a Northern Cape township and schooled at the country’s top universities on scholarship, is the outward face of 390-lawyer Bowman. He handles the firm’s relationships with its most important clients, including The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Rio Tinto Limited, SABMiller plc, and Standard Bank Group Limited. And he is a regular visitor to the Wall Street and Magic Circle firms, cultivating close referral ties with them.
