COURSE
NUMBER: MBA237.11
COURSE
TITLE: Financing Energy and Infrastructure Projects
UNITS
OF CREDIT: 1
INSTRUCTOR:
Allan Marks
E-MAIL
ADDRESS: ATMarks@milbank.com
CLASS
WEB PAGE LOCATION): http://bspace.berkeley.edu
MEETING
DAY(S)/TIME: Sundays, 9:00AM – 5:00PM
Please note the
unusual format of this course, which meets all day on two Sundays: March 7 and
April 25, 2010. You must attend both
sessions in their entirety in order to earn a passing grade.
PREREQUISITE(S):
None
CLASS
FORMAT: Mixture of lecture, cases and
seminar-style class discussion
REQUIRED
READINGS: Benjamin C. Esty, Modern Project Finance: A Casebook (Wiley, 2003) ISBN-10: 0-
471-43425-6 (paperback)
BASIS
FOR FINAL GRADE: Take home final exam
ABSTRACT
OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: This
course will explore the key commercial, legal, economic and policy issues
affecting the development and financing of infrastructure projects, with
special emphasis on practical concerns related to investments in alternative
energy and other power generation facilities and transportation
facilities. Many of these topics will be
raised in the context of comparative, real-world case studies of different
types of energy and infrastructure projects.
Issues specific to cross-border or international transactions will be
discussed as relevant. By the end of the
course, within the specific context of mobilizing capital to meet the growing
demand for clean power and critical infrastructure, students should gain an understanding
of the following general concepts:
· how commercial
and financial interests, regulation, private contracts and market factors
dynamically interrelate;
· how to
optimize/analyze financing structures, leverage and investor return;
· how various project
risks are identified, allocated, mitigated and priced, and the roles of
contracts, hedges and insurance products in managing risk;
· how regulatory
incentives and public policy choices either curtail or facilitate particular
investment opportunities, often in unintended ways; and
· how finance plays a
role in moving new energy technologies from lab to market, from small-scale
deployments to large-scale, and across national borders.
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH:
Allan
Marks is a
partner in the Global Project Finance Department of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley
& McCloy LLP and is based in the Firm’s Los
Angeles office. As part of a broad
corporate and finance practice, he has represented companies involved in power,
oil and gas, transportation, telecommunications, technology, real estate, and
other industries. He is regularly ranked
as one of the top project finance attorneys in the United States. Mr. Marks
routinely represents developers, investors, lenders, and underwriters in the
development and financing of complex infrastructure projects worldwide, with
special expertise in the energy, telecommunications and transportation
sectors. He has participated in numerous
project financings, acquisitions, restructurings, securities offerings and
private placements for a variety of sophisticated institutional clients. He speaks and publishes frequently on
cross-border financing issues, infrastructure investments, renewable energy,
deregulation and emerging markets. Mr.
Marks has worked on transactions throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Allan
Marks received his B.A. in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins
University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has been an adjunct lecturer at University
of California Berkeley School of Law and the Universidad Panamericana
in Mexico City. He is the founding
co-chair of the California State Bar Subsection on Public Private
Infrastructure and co-chair of the North American Infrastructure Law Forum and
has been a member of the Energy Steering Committee of the Institute of the
Americas and the U.S./Mexico Aspen Global Forum, among other professional
organizations.