Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professors Arthur Cohen and Herbert Glaser

LL.M Course 847 (cross-listed) | 3 credit hours

This course will use recent transactions involving infrastructure projects (domestic and international) to illustrate the legal techniques and financial issues involved in project development and financing. The course will address case studies involving energy projects, telecom, toll roads, mining, ports, airports, other infrastructure and professional sports facilities. Class discussion will include analysis of how project risk analysis is done and review of key documents used to develop, construct and finance projects. Students will participate in contract negotiation and drafting exercises with the assumption they represent designated parties to a transaction. Coverage will include different sources of financing, including banks, capital markets, ECAs and multinational entities. There will be both a final examination (open-book) and a short drafting exercise that will be graded. A highlight of the course is a half-day Special Offsite Negotiation Workshop on a Saturday, for which the class will be divided into groups to negotiate a financing term sheet for a model transaction. Readings: The required course textbooks are E.R. Yescombe, Principles of Project Finance (London: Academic Press, an imprint of Elsevier, 2002) and Henry A. Davis, ed., Project Finance: Practical Case Studies, Second Edition (two volume set: Volume I – Water and Power, and Volume II – Resources and Infrastructure) (London, Euromoney Books, 2003). Additional materials and/or case studies will be distributed.

Students may not receive credit for both this course and Domestic and International Project Finance & Development: Case Studies; or the J.D. course, International Project Finance; or International Project Finance and Investment.