Project Finance

Chadbourne is a franchise name in the project finance market. It has worked on transactions in more than 60 countries. Its lawyers advise on the development and financing of greenfield energy, transportation and other industrial projects, including novel public-private partnership structures, as well as acquisitions and divestitures (including privatizations), private equity investments, debt restructurings, and the resolution of political risk claims and investment disputes. Its lawyers worldwide advise major energy and other industrial sponsors, governmental and commercial financing sources, and governments.

The project finance group has one of the deepest benches of any law firm in the world with many specialists in legal issues typical in infrastructure deals, including electric and gas industry regulation, power, wheeling and interconnection agreements, construction contracts, fuel supply and transportation agreements, project and lease financing, tax credit monetizations, tax-exempt bonds, multilateral and bilateral agency financing, litigation, arbitrations, domestic and international tax planning, bankruptcy, environmental, real estate and securities.

The firm is particularly well known for its expertise in a number of areas:

It played a prominent role in the birth of the independent power industry in the United States, litigating against utilities in two dozen states to open markets and taking one case to the U.S. Supreme Court to confirm the enforceability of the U.S. statutory scheme to promote independent power. Chadbourne established itself early on as a premier developer's counsel. It continues to work heavily on the developer side of the business, but over time, lenders, equity investors and investment banks have also turned to it as counsel.

The Firm has put a heavy emphasis in recent years into work on "clean" energy projects. It has a significant share of the U.S. legal market in biofuels projects, meaning plants that make ethanol and biodiesel, and renewable energy projects, or power plants that use wind, sunlight, geothermal steam or fluid, biomass, the oceans and hydrogen to generate electricity. It is handling a variety of clean coal projects, including various forms of coal gasification, coal-to-liquids and advanced technologies for generating electricity from coal.

Chadbourne has long experience with projects in developing countries. It is tapped regularly by the multilateral lending and export credit agencies that are the first to provide financing in such markets. It has had a prominent role in projects in Africa, eastern Europe, central and south Asia and China. Its lawyers include some of the world's leading experts in political risk insurance and partial credit guarantees.

The Firm has also made a heavy investment in work on toll roads and other public infrastructure projects. It has been involved in such geographically diverse projects as the Cross-Israel Highway, the Miami port tunnel project and the Northwest Parkway in Colorado. It distributes a monthly bulletin on toll road developments to an expanding list of clients.

Finally, Chadbourne has played a pioneering role in privatizations of the electricity industry and privately-financed infrastructure projects throughout Latin America, Russia and the former Soviet bloc countries, central Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It has also helped to structure the evolving independent power industries in such countries as Russia, Uzbekistan, Poland, Armenia, Israel, Mexico, China and Korea.

Chadbourne publishes a highly-regarded newsletter, the Project Finance NewsWire. It hosts an annual conference, now in its 18th year, for leaders in the independent power industry. The conference is by invitation only. The Firm hosts workshops on topical issues during the year.

Chadbourne has worked on many cutting-edge transactions. In 2006, transactions on which it worked were named “Power Deal of Year” and “Environmental Deal of the Year” in the Americas by Project Finance International. The firm was named “Renewables Legal Adviser of the Year” by Infrastructure Journal in 2005.

Representative Experience