Project Finance

We advise clients on the full range of projects and related financing arrangements. These arrangements include conventional construction and term loan facilities, letters of credit facilities, commercial paper facilities, capital markets offerings of registered and unregistered project debt securities, sale-leasebacks, leveraged leases, synthetic leases and single investor lease structures, joint ventures and partnership arrangements, private placements and tax-exempt financings, and financing from multilateral institutions, export credit agencies and national development and aid agencies.

We regularly prepare tender documentation, bids and proposals to acquire project assets. We also negotiate, draft and evaluate key project agreements such as power sale agreements, throughput and other off-take agreements, engineering, procurement and construction agreements, fuel supply, transportation and other long-term supply agreements, and operation, maintenance and service agreements. Where non-traditional or alternative project structures can provide additional opportunities, we advise clients on related financing, tax and regulatory implications of these structures. We also provide counsel on domestic and international privatization transactions.

We have developed an extensive body of work in energy-related project finance. We have advised project participants in connection with the development and financing of approximately 100 power generating projects in the United States and abroad. Representing tens of thousands MW of electric capacity with a combined value of more than US$100 billion, these projects have included coal-fired, gas-fired and hydroelectric power generation, cogeneration facilities, alternative technologies and fuels. Projects also include nuclear, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), wood and landfill gas-to-energy ILGE), as well as associated transportation systems and other infrastructure assets.

The project finance group is supported by other attorneys in the firm with considerable expertise in our capital markets, tax, real estate, energy, environmental, and merger and acquisition practices. We regularly advise clients with assets and business interests in the United Kingdom and Europe, Latin America, the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean, Canada, and the Middle East, and have represented foreign interests in similar transactions in the United States. To help move projects through administrative and political barriers, we work closely with members of the firm’s Washington, D.C.-based government relations and public policy subsidiary, McGuireWoods Consulting. Depending on the scope and nature of the project at hand, we can call on the full resources of the firm instantaneously from anywhere in the world.

Given the geographic scope of many client projects, the substantial international language, business and cultural skills of the firm’s lawyers, key staff and professionals offer an important advantage. We speak Russian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Kazakh, Croatian and Afrikaans, among other languages. Many of us have lived around the world, and many are licensed to practice law in multiple countries.