Premier Global Practice.
Milbank has built one of the world’s premier mining and metals financing advisory practices, advising on major mining projects around the world.
Large-scale mining – traditionally, the extraction and production of industrial and precious metals such as copper, iron ore, nickel, zinc, uranium, silver and gold, but more recently expanded to include the sourcing of materials such as potash for fertilizer and lithium for batteries – is almost perfectly designed for project financing. It is highly capital intensive, demanding very significant investment over long periods of time to reach productive capacity and it is global, involving countries and business entities engaged in constant competition for natural resources in sustainable volumes at affordable prices. Large-scale mining also involves appreciable political risk, as major mining projects are frequently located in countries perceived as carrying an added element of political instability and it is environmentally and socially sensitive, subject by its nature to increasingly stringent planning and implementation requirements. Finally, it is increasingly a complex multiparty endeavor, with a single transaction often involving multiple owners, numerous providers of different types and sources of finance, purveyors of multiple devices (such as political risk insurance) designed to spread and allocate risk, and buyers of product in target markets around the globe.
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Deep knowledge and experience
We are consistently recognized and highly ranked in the area of mining and metals, as well as in the project financing of mining transactions, by prominent publications such as Chambers, Who’s Who Legal and Project Finance International. Our client's deals regularly appear in “Deals of the Year” lists, and our practitioners regularly appear in the published lists of the top participants in the field.
We have acted, and continue to act, as counsel to a wide variety of clients, including:
- Governmental export finance and foreign development finance institutions around the world (including in the US, Japan, Germany, Korea and China)
- Commercial banks and capital markets underwriters providing and arranging limited-recourse and long-term finance for mining industry participants
- Private sector and public sector providers of political risk insurance for metals projects in difficult places
- Major mining companies that are developing the projects of tomorrow
global integration
Our lawyers active on these matters are located in virtually all of our offices around the world. Many of the major mining transactions we work on involve close cooperation among our lawyers in two or more offices, proving the added value of our global footprint and well-recognized ability to manage and coordinate matters across borders and time zones.