Young Joon (“YJ”) Kim is a partner in the Hong Kong office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and a member of the firm’s Project Finance Group. Having joined the firm in 1983, he has previously served in the firm’s offices both in New York and Tokyo, where he was the managing partner for 1997-2003.
Primary Focus & Experience
Mr. Kim’s practice is highly diversified, with a concentration on large-scale, cross-border project financing, aviation finance and M&A transactions, with a strong focus on transactions involving large Korean corporates and governmental institutions, including particularly Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) such as Export-Import Bank of Korea (K-Exim) and Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-sure). His recent representations include:
- Lenders, including K-Exim and K-sure as guarantee and insurance coverage providers, in the project financing of a large-scale petrochemical complex in Singapore with a leading Korean energy company as the lead sponsor and contractor.
- Korea’s leading global semiconductor manufacturer in its multi-billion dollar development and financing of semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities in China, which transaction was recognized as the “Project Finance Deal of the Year” by a number of industry journals.
- Lenders, including K-Exim, in the project financing of a nickel mine project in Africa, for which project Korea’s state-owned mining developer was a sponsor.
- Lenders, including K-Exim, in a major LNG project in the Middle East, involving natural gas pipeline, storage and loading facilities.
- German lenders, including German ECAs, in a steel mill project being constructed in India.
- Leading air carriers in Korea and Japan in a series of export-credit financings for the acquisition of Boeing and Airbus aircraft
- Korea’s leading chemical company and its US private equity investor partner in the acquisition and related financing of the global carbon black businesses from a major US chemical company.
- Leading US investment bank in Japan in structuring and documenting the securitization of a class-A commercial building in Tokyo owned by a financial institution.
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International investor in a series of proxy contests with a major Korean company.
Recognition & Accomplishments
Mr. Kim is listed in Chambers Global as a leading corporate lawyer active in Korea and for asset finance, and was voted by Euromoney International Legal Guide as one of the “Leading Banking/Corporate Lawyers of the World.”
Mr. Kim has lectured at conferences addressing the negotiation and documentation of project financing transactions, aviation financings, export credit financings, M&A and corporate governance. Mr. Kim has helped edit the Korean-language “Project Finance” textbook authored by a senior banker at K-Exim, where he regularly gives seminars for K-Exim’s staff and its customers.
Mr. Kim is a member of: the Executive Committee and International Advisory Council of the Harvard Law School Association; the International Advisory Council of the Asian University for Women (Chittagong, Bangladesh, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA); the Asian Corporate Governance Association; the Korean Securities Law Association; the Korea Energy and Nuclear Law Study Group.