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  1. Project finance

Project Development and Finance Practice

Unrivaled advice on the development and financing of the world’s most ground-breaking and complex infrastructure and energy projects

 

Freshfields’ project finance and infrastructure practice advises public and private sector clients on a range of multi-faceted, domestic and international infrastructure and energy projects.

We develop structured solutions for complex transactions done by the world’s leading national and multinational corporations, financial institutions, export credit agencies and governments.

Often the projects we work on are first-of-their-kind transactions. We are at the forefront of developments in the energy and infrastructure sectors, acting for investors, debt arrangers and providers, sponsors and borrowers on a variety of transactions involving regulated and non-regulated infrastructure businesses. Our market-leading expertise and experience in the infrastructure and energy markets span oil and gas, mining and metals, power (conventional and renewable), water treatment facilities, telecommunications and broadband, ports and airports, and transportation (including roads and railways) sub-sectors.

Our knowledge of the evolving debt funding landscape enables us to guide those clients through the ever-greater complexity of project capital structures. Wherever and whenever our clients need us, we offer a full range of legal services from initial structuring, development and financing of a project through to project bonds, restructuring and refinancing of projects, project M&A and dispositions, political risk insurance and other novel split-risk arrangements, export credit and multilateral lending,  dispute resolution as it relates to projects, restructuring and insolvency and bankruptcy.

We draw on our leading Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), anti-bribery, and corruption and competition practices in structuring and diligencing energy and  infrastructure projects. This is especially valuable in identifying, assessing and mitigating risks at the outset of a new transaction.

With a team of global lawyers who have seen transactions from every point-of-view, we are able to anticipate issues and provide commercial, on-market advice that gets deals done.

Client Successes

  • In connection with the $1.2bn financing for the construction, startup, operation and maintenance of a world-scale anhydrous ammonia plant in Mexico
  • In connection with a limited recourse financing for the Big River Steel steel mill project in Arkansas, an IJGlobal Deal of the Year for 2014 and Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Award recipient (“Highly Commended”)
  • In connection with a limited recourse financing for the Mississippi Silicon silicon smelter project in Mississippi

  • The administrative agent and steering committee of lenders in out-of-court restructuring of a multitranche credit facility secured by La Muralla IV, a semi-submersible drillship, with contract revenues from PEMEX in a matter that spans Mexican, Portuguese, Korean and US jurisdictions. Following the restructuring, we negotiated for the lenders to be taken out and they were repaid in full.

  • Overseas Private Investment Corporation as the lender in the financing of the deployment of a 4G LTE network in six cities in Colombia (Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Bucaramanga, Barranquilla and Cartagena) by Avantel S.A.S.
  • Overseas Private Investment Corporation on the development, construction and startup operating expenses associated with Platanares, a 35MWe geothermal power plant, the first utility scale geothermal project in Honduras

  • In connection with the limited recourse financing of a hotel in Costa Rica
  • In connection with a syndicated financing for the construction and development of a W Hotel in Vieques, Puerto Rico and its subsequent refinancing

  • The facility agent for the lenders, on the restructuring of project financing indebtedness incurred by Olympia Shipping B.V., a Dutch company, with respect to a compact semi-submersible offshore accommodation vessel owned by the borrower and under charter to Petrobras Netherlands B.V

  • NY transactional counsel to a developer in connection with its development and financing of a multi-phase waste to energy project in the Caribbean

  • In connection with the development of a coal mining business in West Virginia, several related financings (including commercial bank financing, 144A and first lien/second lien facilities) and the subsequent merger of such business with a public company

  • Formerly The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), on a limited recourse financing to Apollo Towers Myanmar Ltd. (Apollo), a cell phone tower company incorporated in Myanmar, and an indirect subsidiary of, among others, TPG Growth II SF Pte Ltd. and Tillman Global Holdings (which is owned by ex-Orange CEO Sanjiv Ahuja)

  • In the financing transaction of their 274 MW thermal general portfolio in the Caribbean

  • In connection with the limited recourse financing from IFC, IDB and Banco Santander for the development of an inland barge logistics project in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil

  • As lead arrangers on the financing of the Enercon project, a delayed coker complex at Chilean state oil company Empresa Nacional del Petróleo’s Anconcagua refinery in Concón, Chile

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