The Legal 500

Work Department

Banking; project finance.

Position

Partner in the global project finance department and is based at the firm’s London office. Mr Dewar’s practice centres on project and structured finance transactions in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He has acted for both lenders and sponsors in a wide range of industries, including power, oil and gas, petrochemicals, satellites, telecommunications, water, infrastructure and mining. He has advised on some of the most complex multi-sourced financings involving export credit agencies, multilateral agencies, commercial and Islamic banks. His power project experience includes working on the financing of the 586MW Uch Power Project in Pakistan, the Manah Power Project, the Salalah Power Project, and the Barka 1 Power Project, all in Oman, the Tihama Cogeneration Project and the Shuaibah IWPP, and the US$3.5bn Marafiq IWPP in Saudi Arabia. In Europe, he has advised on the 990MW gas-fired Tapada power project in Portugal, including the structuring of the gas supply arrangements from the Maghreb gas field in Algeria and has advised parties in connection with the restructuring of the Italian electricity sector. He has also worked on several UK financings, including advising the lenders to the 400MW Shoreham Power Project, a merchant plant on the south coast of England. In Ireland, he led the Milbank team that closed the 350MW Huntstown Power Project, the first IPP to reach financial close in the Republic. In the water sector he has advised on the Al Wathba and Saad waste water projects in Abu Dhabi and on the Hamma desalination project in Algeria. In the petrochemicals industry he has advised sponsors and lenders on the structuring and financing of numerous large oil and gas projects, pre-eminently in connection with the $3.2bn Yanpet petrochemical plant expansion in Saudi Arabia, the sponsors in the US$2.5bn Saudi Integrated Petrochemical Project, 52 commercial banks in connection with the US$6.1bn Reliance Petroleum refinery and petrochemicals project in India, and the sponsors of the $1bn Qatofin Petrochemical project in Qatar. He has also worked on several infrastructure and telecom satellite projects. He leads Milbank’s Islamic business unit and regularly addresses conferences such as the Islamic finance forum in Dubai, the petrochemicals in the Middle East conference and has also addressed the annual Paris Project Finance International Conference. He has written numerous articles for ‘Project Finance International’, the ‘International Finance Law Review’, and the ‘Fordham International Law Journal’. Mr Dewar has been recognised by ‘The Legal 500’, ‘IFLR’, ‘Chambers’, ‘Legal Experts’, ‘Global Counsel 3000’ and ‘Who’s Who Legal’ as among the world’s leading project finance lawyers. He is the editor of ‘International Project Finance – Law and Practice’ (Oxford University Press).

Member

Law Society of England and Wales.

Education

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (1988); College of Law, Guildford (1989).

Leisure

Squash, music, history.

Practice Areas

Banking (non-contentious); Energy and natural resources; Project finance (including PFI)