Linklaters has advised on the development and financing of the first two UK offshore wind projects to obtain financing under the government’s new ‘Contract for Difference’ (CFD) regime, worth £2.6bn and £1.3bn respectively.
The Magic Circle firm advised on the construction and financing of the offshore windfarm Beatrice located in the Outer Moray Firth, worth £2.6bn, and advised the developers on the £1.3bn long-term financing for the development of one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms, the Dudgeon windfarm off the east coast of England.
Projects partner Richard Coar led the Linklaters team advising the sponsors of Beatrice alongside projects partner John Pickett. The deal involved 13 commercial lenders as well as the European Investment Bank and the Danish export credit agency Eksport Kredit Fonden as well as SSE Renewables, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and SDIC Power.
Linklaters also advised the developers for Dudgeon – the Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil, which has a 35% stake; Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company Masdar, which also has a 35% share; and Norway’s state-owned electricity company Statkraft which owns the remainder. The team on that transaction was led by Pickett.
For the Dudgeon windfarm, Allen & Overy acted for the mandated lead arrangers, including the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi; BNP Paribas Fortis; and Société Générale. Its team was led by Chris Andrew and included partner Sheila Connell.
Linklaters’ Coar said: ‘We have been fortunate enough as a firm to have advised on most of the [CFD projects]. We’ve advised on Dudgeon, we’ve advised on Beatrice and we’re advising on a couple of biomass transactions that are moving forward on CFDs as well. We know the regime well.’
He added: ‘To get some of these big wind and big biomass deals starting to come through on the new regime is fantastic. We hope to have a couple of biomass CFD projects reaching financial close in the next six months or so.’
While Magic Circle firms have been affected by a drop off in project finance work, Linklaters and A&O are the dominant firms in the market, with A&O handling 10% of the market between January 2012 and December 2014, according to Dealogic.
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk