Elliot Hinds focuses his practice on corporate and energy matters, with extensive experience in the areas of debt financing, mergers and acquisitions, project development and finance, and corporate and commercial transactions. He represents a wide variety of businesses in the important milestones of debt financing, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, corporate structuring and strategic commercial contracting that occur in their development and lifecycles. His client work includes representation of owners, developers, private equity firms, hedge funds and other investors, and lenders in strategic transactional matters in the energy, manufacturing, health care and other capital-intensive industries.
Mr. Hinds has extensive energy experience, having structured transactions to develop, finance, purchase and sell renewable (including wind, geothermal, solar and biomass), natural gas, cogeneration and coal-fired electric power projects; LNG and bioethanol facilities; and transportation projects. He worked on some of the first merchant facilities to be developed and/or owned in a fully deregulated environment and was an integral part of the team that designed and arranged the financings for a key electric energy forward market in California.
His notable representations include—
- representation of private wind developer in multiple complex and coordinated letter of credit and mezzanine debt financings totaling $240 million
- representation of a major community college district in connection with development and over $50 million financing of multicampus solar energy facility installation program using tax-efficient financing strategies
- representation of private geothermal electric power developer in the completion of a $108 million second-round private equity financing
- representation of publicly traded company in connection with approximately $300 million divestiture of energy management services business, which divestiture was motivated by the need to reduce or eliminate bonding and capital support obligations
- representation of private wind energy developer in over $1 billion omnibus debt and equity restructuring of existing corporate and turbine acquisition secured loans
- representation of health care company in connection with multiple acquisitions, dispositions and financing transactions involving hundreds of millions of dollars
- representation of communications company in $820 million acquisition debt financing transaction
- representation of major energy developer in connection with acquisition and joint venture for the development of $2 billion mine-mouth coal-fired electric generation facility
- represented private owner in connection with development, joint venture negotiations and subsequent project financing of the $760 million LNG facility in Canada that was named North American Mid-Stream Oil and Gas “Deal of the Year 2006.”
Mr. Hinds is a member of the State Bar of California and has served on its Uniform Commercial Code Committee. He frequently speaks to industry groups and teaches in-house courses. He is a member of several professional organizations including the Energy Bar Association, Association for Corporate Growth and Los Angeles Venture Association. He has served on the board of directors for the Los Angeles Center for Law & Justice and has taught a self-designed transactional negotiations course at Loyola Law School.
Mr. Hinds is currently a member of the Los Angeles office’s diversity committee.
Mr. Hinds received his Bachelor of Arts degree in rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley and his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center where he was a senior editor of Law and Policy in International Business.
Mr. Hinds was recognized as one of the “Top 25 Clean Tech Lawyers in California” by the Daily Journal in 2011.