With Knowledgeable Legal Advice, It’s Easy to Be Green.
As businesses and individuals around the world strive to be cleaner, greener and more sustainable, environmental issues will become even more intertwined in all corporate matters. Companies, individuals and government agencies need to keep pace with this rapidly developing area of law and its implications on their transactions. Milbank's Environmental Group provides specialized environmental and natural resource legal services in connection with our transactional and litigation practices, helping to shepherd our clients through the thicket of complex, and often times conflicting, environmental regulations that can affect their business practices. Our key areas of environmental specialization include:
Regulatory Counseling
We counsel international industrial and energy companies, real estate developers, lenders, investors and buyers regarding complex environmental and natural resource regulatory compliance and permitting strategies. We regularly advise electricity generation companies on environmental permitting, emissions trading and Clean Air Act regulatory changes, and also advise lenders and investors on the business implications of proposed and pending environmental legislation and regulations, including those relating to global climate change.
Corporate Transactions
We regularly support the Corporate Group with respect to acquisitions, mergers, divestitures and private equity investments through contract negotiation and environmental risk assessment, including the evaluation of risks associated with:
- Contaminated real property
- Non-compliance with environmental, health and safety laws
- Off-site waste disposal or “Superfund” liability
- Environmental “legacy” liabilities from historic facilities and operations
- Environmental litigation, including asbestos, silicosis and other exposure and environmental damage claims.
Workouts and Restructurings
We also regularly advise creditors, debtors and asset purchasers in workout and restructuring proceedings with respect to strategies for addressing environmental risks and for protecting reorganized entities from historic “legacy” environmental claims and liabilities.
Financial Transactions
We support the Finance Group through contract negotiation and due diligence, including compliance with domestic, foreign and international environmental requirements, the Equator Principles, and with the environmental guidelines and procedures of the World Bank Group, other development banks and export credit agencies.
Environmental, Infrastructure and Renewable Energy Projects
We have extensive experience in negotiating and closing financing for environmental and infrastructure projects, such as:
- Transmission line projects
- Waste management facilities
- Water and wastewater treatment facilities
- Renewable energy projects, such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric and landfill gas projects
Litigation
We frequently pursue and defend environmental claims relating to site contamination and regulatory enforcement, including advising investors, lenders and financial parties regarding the significance of such claims to business plans.
Representative services we provide in the environmental field include:
- Representation of lenders, such as BBVA, UniCredit, BTMU and Societe Generale, on financings for US renewable energy projects
- Representation of ad hoc creditor committees in the Lyondell and Tronox bankruptcy proceedings
- Representation of Parking Company America Airports in the sale of substantially of its assets in the PCAA bankruptcy proceeding
- Representation of Arrow Electronics on corporate acquisitions
- Representation of BTMU in financings for thermal energy projects.