Energy - London
The team "anticipates our needs well, and works with us just how we want" (Chambers)
“The firm is particularly strong in energy derivatives and emissions trading” (Legal 500)
We have an active practice providing services to energy companies and marketers, investment banks, international brokers and dealers in all areas of energy regulation; power plant regulation and contracting, including corporate structures and regulation; mergers and acquisitions; and power, natural gas and oil sales, transactions, documentation and trading. We work closely with our colleagues in the Energy services sector in the US, Brussels, Germany and Italy to provide our clients with a seamless multijurisdictional service. Our clients include investment banks, energy companies and marketers, brokerage firms, electronic exchanges and trading networks, clearing organisations, industrial and commercial consumers, and end users of risk management instruments and services.
Our Group is acknowledged in leading legal directories and by respected market commentators.
The services we provide include:
- Monitoring, analysing and providing advice about regulatory and legislative developments affecting the energy markets
- Advising on power plant regulation and contracting
- Advising on UK oil regulation
- Representing and advising energy companies and investment banks in litigation concerning transactional issues in the energy sector
- Representing clients in mergers and acquisitions in the energy sector
- Advising extensively on power, natural gas and oil sales, transactions, documentation and trading (including drafting and negotiating GTMA, EFET, ISDA and other master agreements and related documents for over-the-counter forward (physical delivery) and derivative (financially settled) transactions)
- Advising major international investment banks and other financial institutions on credit and other risks posed by trading in electric power pools and regional transmission organisations
- Advising clients on tax issues arising in the energy trading sector
- Analysing and providing advice about regulatory and legislative developments affecting futures and derivatives
- Advising extensively on insolvency issues arising in the UK energy markets
- Representing clients in structured energy and credit derivatives transactions
- Analysing the regulatory issues involved in providing risk management products and services, including trading advice, to institutional, commercial and industrial customers
- Providing trading related insolvency advice to arbitragers, commodities traders and end-users
- Drafting and negotiating agreements and related documents among customers, futures commission merchants, introducing brokers, trading advisers, exchanges and clearing organisations for commodities, futures and other derivative products traded on exchanges or other multilateral trading facilities
- Prosecuting patent applications for financial products and methods of doing business
- Drafting and negotiating agreements and related documents for the provision of scheduling and risk management services in energy markets
Our experience includes:
- Advising a US investment bank on a £470m structured energy related tolling proposal with a consortium involving the hedging of electricity, coal and EU emissions allowances
- Advising a major international investment bank on cross-border legal and regulatory requirements in relation to trading (financial and physical) in coal, emissions, gas, oil, power and freight across 35 jurisdictions, along with drafting of notifications and license applications to relevant state-level regulators across numerous jurisdictions and advising on trading documentation forms
- Advising on new UK and European standard gas, power and emissions trading and credit support documentation and carrying out a programme of negotiations with 44 separate counterparties, for a major energy group of companies
- Advising on the structuring of a cross border electricity scheduling agreement
- Advising Merrill Lynch on the purchase of the energy trading business of Entergy-Koch, LP
- Advising a major energy company on prospective power-related trading and transactional activity in Poland and on prospective wind-power acquisitions globally
- Advising a major international investment bank, extensively and continuously on the contractual negotiation and documentation of its UK and European electricity-trading activities, in particular under the UK Grid Trade Master Agreement and the European Federation of Energy Traders Master Agreement
- Advising Morgan Stanley on energy related matters in the UK
- Advising WestLB in respect of their exposure to Teeside Power Ltd, the owner of the 1300MW IGCC Teeside Power Station, following the collapse of Enron
- Advising Kvaerner ASA with respect to the financing aspects of the US$100m sale of its hydrocarbons and process technology businesses to Yukos Oil
- Advising a leading energy company in relation to the sale of their interest in a 216MW gas/naphtha-fired combination cycle power project in India
- Advising The London Clearing House on the negotiation of important energy sector clearing services agreements
- Advising an international energy company on the prospective acquisition of power-related assets in Scotland
- Advising a major US investment bank on derivative and physical energy and fixed income products trading, including tax and VAT treatment, insolvency issues and dispute resolution
