Counsel to Counsel - January 2008 - (Page 5) partnership at a glance developer in projects. It can be complicated to structure these deals in a way that meets with the approval of the Internal Revenue Service. That’s one reason the expertise of Martin and his team has been invaluable, says Lim. UPC Wind UPC Wind has more than 40 wind farms in development across the country. The company, based in Newton, Mass., is focused on wind farm development, ownership and operation. Building primarily in the Northeast, West and Hawaii, UPC Wind is producing nearly 100 megawatts of energy through three operational wind farms. Respecting Each Other’s Time Among its current projects: • The Stetson Wind Project in Washington County, Maine, which will produce 57 megawatts; • The Sheffield Wind Project in Sheffield, Vt., which will produce 40 megawatts; and • The Milford Wind Corridor Project in Milford, Utah, which will produce 200 megawatts. These wind farms can benefit from significant tax breaks—the federal tax subsidies alone can reduce the cost of a project by 63 percent. But most small operations, including UPC Wind, lack the tax base to take advantage of them. However, development deals can be structured to allow institutional equity investors to share in the subsidies by investing alongside the And not only do they have the expertise— they can translate it into plain English, and they respect the time constraints of the legal department and the business people. “Keith doesn’t waste time on issues that don’t matter,” says Lim. “He has a way of breaking deals down. Many tax attorneys focus on the technical tax aspects of a deal and can forget who their audience is.” Evelyn Lim, general counsel at UPC Wind, is responsible for strategizing, managing and directing the company’s legal affairs. Prior to joining UPC Wind in 2006, she was a partner in the finance group of McDermott Will & Emery LLP in Los Angeles. Contact Evelyn at elim@upcwind.com. Tim Rosenzweig is vice president, finance and chief financial officer at UPC Wind, where he directs and oversees all financial activities, with a primary focus on raising capital for UPC Wind and its project companies. Since joining UPC Wind in 2002, he has led the company’s capital raising efforts, which total in excess of $1.5 billion to date. He can be reached at trosenzweig@upcwind.com. Martin and his team are also very responsive, says Lim. “Keith is always available, and that is pretty amazing. Outside counsel have many different demands on their time.” Martin, who originally planned to be a journalist, tries to be very sensitive to the time pressures on his clients. “You learn to understand your audience,” he says. “I assume that people are busy.” Those are particularly important characteristics at UPC Wind, which has a very small legal department. The company, which received significant investment in 2006 from a member of the D.E. Shaw group and an affiliate of Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC, has one other attorney in-house besides Lim. Martin, Associate Marissa L. Alcala and others on the team often work directly with Tim Rosenzweig, vice president, finance and chief financial officer. “We’re a small, flat organization,” says Rosenzweig, who has been with the company since nearly the beginning of its operations. “We’re not a huge company with a huge bureaucracy.” martindale.com/c2c JANUARY 2008 05 http://www.martindale.com/c2c
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.