The international law firm of Chadbourne & Parke announced today that project finance lawyers Paul J. Kaufman and Evelyn Lim will join the firm as partners on August 1 in the Los Angeles office, bolstering Chadbourne’s West Coast project finance capabilities.
Both are veteran renewable energy lawyers.
Mr. Kaufman is currently executive vice president for transactions of enXco, the North American development arm of Electricité de France. He joined enXco as general counsel in 2008. Mr. Kaufman has been a well regarded energy lawyer since 1984. He began as a regulatory lawyer for the Public Power Council, a trade group of 118 public utility districts, municipal utilities and electric cooperatives and then practiced for 11 years as a lawyer with a firm in Oregon, where he acted for one of the two big coalitions of independent power companies active in California. He appeared in regulatory proceedings for a variety of clients before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and public utility commissions in the western US from Arizona to Alaska. In 1997, he moved to Enron where he directed government and regulatory affairs in the western US for five years. After Enron, he became general counsel of what was then PPM Energy, one of the top three US wind companies, headquartered in Portland. During Mr. Kaufman’s tenure, PPM was owned initially by Scottish Power, the Scottish utility, and then by Iberdrola, a Spanish utility, at which time it changed its name to Iberdrola Renewables. During Mr. Kaufman’s tenure as general counsel, the company not only developed wind farms, but also had active gas storage and gas and electricity trading businesses.
Ms. Lim comes to Chadbourne from Element Power, a global renewable energy company headquartered in Oregon, where she served as senior vice president and general counsel. Before that, she was general counsel of First Wind, an independent North American wind development company. (Before becoming a lawyer, Ms. Lim danced with the New York City ballet.) She spent eight years as an associate with Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy in New York and Los Angeles, and then was a partner with McDermott Will & Emery in Los Angeles and London before being recruited to the general counsel position at First Wind where she helped raise more than $2 billion from various sources, including turbine, construction and term lenders, tax equity investors, financial sponsors and other investors. While at Milbank, Ms. Lim worked mainly for underwriters in private and public offerings of debt and equity securities, including Rule 144A and Reg. S, high-yield and structured debt offerings, monetizations of energy contracts and other structured products. She has also spent significant time on non-power infrastructure projects, including a submerged tunnel road project in Greece, the Monterrey-Cadereyta toll road project in Mexico and the Autopista Central toll road project in Chile.
“We are very fortunate to have two such capable people join us” said Keith Martin, co-head of Chadbourne’s project finance department. “The sort of experience they bring at leading renewable energy developers should make them stand out in the market. They understand the business at a deeper level than most outside counsel.”
“Both should fit seamlessly into what is already a huge renewable energy practice,” added practice co-chair Rohit Chaudhry. “They will bring the headcount in our project finance group to 80 lawyers. Roughly 70% of the group’s work is in the renewable energy sector. This work is increasingly outside the United States, particularly in Latin America and Africa.”
“The hiring of Mr. Kaufman and Ms. Lim puts us back on the ground in California in project finance. We expect to grow from there,” remarked Robin Ball, managing partner of Chadbourne’s L.A. office.
“What particularly appealed to us about Paul and Evelyn is they are not just renewable energy lawyers, but they have also done other things: Paul with his work for Enron and on gas storage and electricity and gas trading, and Evelyn with her work on complicated capital markets and structured finance transactions and other types of infrastructure projects,” said Chadbourne managing partner Andrew Giaccia.
Mr. Kaufman earned a B.S. in natural resources from Cornell University and a J.D. from Northwestern School of Law.
Ms. Lim received a B.S. in applied economics and business management from Cornell University and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law.
