Green and Sustainable Finance

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing is receiving significant public attention, and corporations, sponsors, investors and financial institutions are increasingly examining the impact of their investment decisions on ESG issues. Financial institutions may now link project funding to the implementation of applicable sustainability frameworks, and greater attention is being paid to the rights of women, indigenous peoples and other minorities. Project sponsors are responding with more detailed identification and mitigation of environmental and social impacts, and corporate borrowers are identifying meaningful ways to improve the sustainability of their practices.

As sustainable funding continues to gain momentum, our global team of finance lawyers can advise on all aspects of this sector, including financial services regulations, environmental and social standards compliance, and equity and debt investments such as sustainability-linked loans, green bonds and green loans. Our attorneys have extensive experience structuring financing for renewable energy projects and other green and social infrastructure, as well as structuring sustainability-linked financing for corporate borrowers.

With more than 35 years of experience in Latin America, our multicultural teams in the U.S., Colombia and Mexico have been selected for inclusion in leading industry publications based on their work in the region, including Chambers Global, Chambers Latin America, The Legal 500, Latin Lawyer 250, Best Lawyers in America, Who's Who Legal and Latin America Corporate Counsel Association (LACCA) Approved. Several of our team's Latin American projects and sustainable financing deals have been named "Deals of the Year."

Representative Transactions

• Represented Fibra UNO, Mexico's first and largest real estate investment trust (REIT), in connection with a $1 billion dual tranche (U.S. dollars and Mexican pesos), five-year sustainability-linked revolving credit agreement; the syndicated facility complies with the Loan Syndications and Trading Association's (LSTA) Sustainability Linked Loan Principles and is the first of its kind for a Mexican borrower such as Fibra UNO; named "Financing Innovation of the Year" at LatinFinance's 2019 Deal of the Year Awards
• Represented International Seaways Inc., one of the world's largest crude oil and petroleum product tanker companies, in a $390 million committed secured loan transaction, with a $100 million uncommitted accordion; International Seaways employed a groundbreaking sustainability-linked pricing mechanism, the first of its kind for a New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)-listed ship owner and operator, consistent with the decarbonization trajectory in the Poseidon Principles, the global framework by which financial institutions can assess the climate alignment of their ship finance portfolios
• Represented Banco del Pais S.A., the fifth-largest bank in Honduras, in the negotiation of credit facilities provided by the Development Finance Corporation of the United States (DFC) and Citibank N.A. the proceeds of which would be deployed to women-owned and women-led small and midsize enterprises.
• Represented the Argentinian province of Jujuy as issuer in connection with an international offering of a $210 million green bond that co-financed a 300-megawatt (MW) solar project selected in the first round of the country's program for large-scale renewables (RenovAr); the financing complied with the Green Bond Principles (GBP) issued by International Capital Markets Association (ICMA)
• Advised a Mexican issuer in connection with an international green bond offering that adheres to the ICMA GBP
• Advised a Central American public works company as issuer in connection with a green-linked international bond offering
• Advised Oak Creek Energy in the development, project finance and sale of the first two construction-ready stages of its Tres Mesas wind projects to funds managed by Goldman Sachs and Corporativo GBM; named 2015 IJGlobal Latin American Wind Deal of the Year
• Advised Energia Eolica S.A., an indirect subsidiary of ContourGlobal, in connection with a $204 million green project bond to finance two wind power projects in northwestern Peru with a combined capacity of 114 MW; this was the first U.S. dollar green project bond issued in Peru; named 2015 Environmental Finance Bond Deal of the Year
• Represented New York Green Bank (NYGB) in support of a senior secured $35 million term loan facility to generate a pay per leave (PPL), special purpose vehicle to refinance a portion of a senior secured term loan with Plug Power Inc. for solar technology, including for community solar, anaerobic digesters, energy storage and fuel cells
• Represented NYGB on a $5 million construction and operation of Saranac Waterfront Lodge, an energy-efficient, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified lodging and the first LEED-certified hotel in the Adirondack Park, located on the shores of Lake Flower and partially located on a former Superfund site