Gilbert D. Porter is a partner in the New York office of Haynes and Boone. He is a member of the firm's Finance Practice and Co-Chair of the firm's Projects Practice. For more than 30 years his practice has included financial product development, project development and financing, structured lending, workouts, joint ventures, negotiated mergers and acquisitions, and mezzanine and venture financing. His span of work places a particular emphasis on the energy industry, telecommunications and other regulated industries and technology-based companies, both in the OECD and emerging markets.

Mr. Porter is a recognized leader and innovator in the area of project finance and infrastructure development, having played a prominent role in the development of the project finance model used in the U.S. independent power industry during the 1980s, its expansion into the de-regulated era of the 1990s, its translation to other industries and infrastructure, and its adaptation to the special challenges of emerging markets and the current competitive markets.

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Porter was Co-Chair of the Global Finance Group and the Project Finance Group at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP. Before that, Mr. Porter was a founding partner, and the Managing Partner, of Porter & Travers.

Breadth and depth are the attributes that Mr. Porter uses to describe his 30 years of practice. During this period he has successfully structured and closed more than 120 project-related transactions, and consulted on several hundred more, including by way of example:

• gas and coal-fired cogeneration plants and other fossil-fueled power plants;
  
  
• geothermal, biomass and other alternate-fuel and renewable-resource power plants;
  
  
• nuclear fuel trusts, synthetic lease trusts and similar financial products;
  
  
• wireless and wireline telecommunications, data communications and media projects;
  
  
• ethanol plants and plants for synthetic fuels and lubricants;
  
  
• specialty chemicals and petrochemicals plants;
  
  
• pulp-and paper facilities;
  
  
• natural resource development, mining and mineral processing facilities;
  
  
• agricultural and food-processing facilities;
  
  
• marine terminal facilities and loading and warehousing facilities; and
  
  
• toll-roads, stadiums and other public infrastructure.

Starting with his unique and innovative financing strategy that helped support the independent candidacy of John Anderson for President of the United States in 1980, Mr. Porter has been known for handling first-of-a-kind transactions, addressing new technologies, innovative structures and markets, and novel adaptations of existing products. In addition to numerous examples in the project industry, many other of his transactions developed and established the precedents for current financial products, including early derivatives and securitization models, precedent-setting production payment and equipment trust products, leasing and synthetic leasing products employing unique assets and addressing unique overseas legal regimes, equity monetization products and other products providing clients customized access to capital markets that were previously unavailable. Because of his expertise in such products and his knowledge of the industries, he has also successfully assisted clients in prominent workouts, restructurings and bankruptcies, both in the U.S. and in emerging markets.

Mr. Porter's experience in emerging markets reflects the same combination of breadth and depth, across multiple industries and countries, including projects and privatizations, structuring of joint ventures and other long-term capital investments, representation of financial institutions in complex cross-border financing transactions and utilization of political risk products and financing available from export credit agencies and other multinational and international financial institutions. He has successfully structured and closed transactions in more than 35 different countries throughout the Americas, Asia, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Africa.

Mr. Porter also actively represents major corporations in joint ventures, financings, and negotiated mergers and acquisitions, both domestically and abroad. Recent transactions include competitive tenders in the U.S. power generation markets and the disposition by leading power companies of their non-U.S. power generation assets, as well as proposed joint ventures and acquisitions in the telecommunications, media, gas management and power industries in the U.S., Latin America and Asia. 

Mr. Porter served as the Editor of Project Finance Monthly from 1991-2001.  He served as a member of the Board of  Editors of Euromoney's Project Finance from 1992-2003 and as a member of the Board of Advisors to the Institute for Infrastructure Finance from 1995-1997.  He has been repeatedly acknowledged in the International Financial Law Review's Guide to the World's Leading Project Finance Lawyers, The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers and other publications for his work in the Project Finance sector.

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