Edward Hammond works with both lenders and borrowers in structuring, negotiating, and executing large, complex commercial, and industrial financing transactions, with a specialty in renewable energy and infrastructure project financing.
As a partner and business transaction lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, Ed serves as the national vice-chair of the firm’s Finance Practice Group and is a member of the firm’s Energy Sector.
Ed has extensive experience representing lenders, other financing parties, investors, and sponsors in innovative financing structures for renewable energy projects, including development and construction loans (with banks and non-bank lenders), back-leverage term loan financing, tax equity investments, private debt placements, and P3 financing structures. He has assisted clients with utility-scale, residential, commercial, and industrial solar power projects (including community solar power projects incorporating energy storage components), energy storage projects, and large-scale wind projects in addition to his familiarity with other energy project technologies including combined heat and power/district heating and cooling projects, biomass and biofuel projects, and other energy and alternative energy technologies.
Representative Experience
- Advised KeyBank National Association, a commercial bank and trust company, in its capacity as Administrative Agent and a lender, as well as KeyBank Capital Markets and City National Bank, as joint lead arrangers, on a loan to Scale Microgrids for a US$225m first-of-its-kind, non-recourse project finance debt facility.
- Represented a client in a term loan and LC loan facility in the aggregate principal amount of US$68,218,294.04 to be used (i) with respect to the term loan, the acquisition by an affiliate of the borrowers of solar projects located in Massachusetts, New York, and Minnesota and (ii) with respect to the LC loan, the funding of the debt service and the issuance of project-level decommissioning LCs.
- Represented a commercial bank as an administrative agent and lead lender in a US$26m construction loan facility. The construction loan facility was taken out and replaced by a US$57m sale-leaseback investment with the same national bank. In the same transaction, subsequently, we represented Fifth Third Bank and M&T Bank in a syndication of the sale-leaseback tax equity investment.
- Represented a super-regional U.S. financial institution as the lead arranger and administrative agent in a $140m syndicated construction and term debt financing for a portfolio of utility-scale and community solar energy generation projects located in five states across the United States, including a refinancing of the facility to add 10 additional projects and complex interparty negotiations with an institutional tax equity investor in the projects.
Awards and Recognition
- Peer Review Rated as AV® Preeminent™, Martindale-Hubbell‘s peer review rating system
- The Best Lawyers in America© – Structured finance law, Project Finance Law, and Financial Services Regulation Law since 2007
- Best Lawyers Milwaukee “Lawyer of the Year”
- Project Finance Law (2014, 2017)
- Commercial Finance Law (2016)
- The Legal 500 for Project Finance (2011-2016) and Energy – Renewable/Alternative (2015)
Affiliations
- American Bar Association, Business Law Section
- Milwaukee Bar Association
- State Bar of Wisconsin
- American College of Investment Counsel
- President (2011)