Digital Infrastructure & Strategic Capital

McDermott Will & Schulte’s energy & infrastructure project finance team advises sponsors, investors, lenders, utilities, and private credit providers on the full energy and infrastructure project finance life cycle. With one of the deepest benches across project finance, tax, regulatory, derivatives, and commercial transactions, our team delivers deal-tested insights and practical, financeable solutions that help advance complex and critical projects with certainty and speed.

We support clients across the renewable, transitional, and conventional power markets. Our integrated approach ensures each financing structure is aligned with the commercial, tax, regulatory, and risk considerations that drive today’s energy markets.

A partner across energy transition investments

With one of the industry’s most sophisticated, multidisciplinary energy platforms, McDermott brings together project finance, tax, regulatory, derivatives, mergers and acquisitions, and commercial experience to help clients execute the energy transition with confidence. Our team delivers responsive, practical, and commercially-oriented guidance that anticipates market trends and aligns with your strategic goals.

Energy and infrastructure projects sit at the intersection of capital, regulation, operations, and political risk. Our energy law team helps you navigate these pressures so you can deploy capital strategically. We partner with you to structure projects and investments that deliver value under changing market conditions, evolving energy policy, and shifting regulatory demands.

Our energy law team includes more than 50 lawyers worldwide. We help you operate in complex energy markets by integrating regulatory, financing, transactional, tax, and operational capabilities under a single platform. Our lawyers guide you through every stage of your energy and infrastructure project – from origination and financing through acquisition, development, construction, operation, and long-term asset management.

We help investors, developers, lenders, and operators structure and execute critical transactions across global markets. Our energy lawyers advise on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, project development, financing, project finance, commodities and trading matters, and strategic investments that span both conventional and renewable energy sectors. Our legal guidance is informed by the commercial realities of how stakeholders work together to finance, develop, optimize, and transition energy assets.

To support value creation and keep your projects moving forward under evolving market conditions, we help you maintain compliance with regulatory frameworks and manage operational and financial exposure. We leverage our global platform to guide you through regulations across jurisdictions while maintaining a consistent commercial and legal strategy.

Our team has deep experience guiding transactions in Africa – a leading market for renewable energy investment and infrastructure development. We help you navigate complex civil and common law requirements in 45 countries across the region, working closely with local partners to manage the geopolitical and operational risks that can impact project success.

With experience in how energy markets operate, we know where energy and infrastructure deals typically encounter friction. We draw on these insights to help you structure and close transactions that comply with regulations and deliver long-term value throughout the life cycle of your project or investment.

Financial markets evolve quickly – reshaping how capital is raised, deployed, and managed. Our financial services lawyers guide you through banking and financial services law across transactions, regulation, and disputes, so you can execute strategies, access capital, and adapt as market conditions change.

We focus on the decisions that shape how your platform grows, operates, and deploys capital. With an integrated team spanning regulatory, tax, transactional, and litigation capabilities, we bring clarity to complex decisions and support execution across jurisdictions and market cycles.

Private capital is reshaping today’s financial services landscape. Asset managers, credit platforms, and financial institutions are expanding into new products, structures, and markets. We advise across a broad range of financial services transactions, financing structures, and capital strategies, including:

• Fund formation and capital raising
• Private credit and direct lending strategies
• Fund finance solutions, including subscription, NAV, and hybrid facilities
• Leveraged finance, acquisition financing, and capital markets transactions
• Structured finance, securitizations, and specialty finance arrangements
• Asset-backed lending, derivatives, and hybrid financing arrangements
• Strategic transactions, joint ventures, and platform investments
• As traditional and nonbank finance converge, financing structures are becoming more complex. We align structuring, documentation, and regulatory considerations so financing solutions work in practice and support your commercial objectives.

Regulatory, tax, and transactional decisions are closely connected, and choices in one area can affect outcomes in another. We advise across securities, banking, and investment management regulation, as well as on M&A deals, joint ventures, strategic partnerships, cross-border approvals, and tax structuring for funds and financial products. Our integrated approach supports transactions that align with regulatory expectations and investor priorities.

Transactions, disputes, and restructuring events often intersect, particularly during periods of market volatility. We represent you in strategic transactions, investigations, enforcement matters, restructurings, workouts, and litigation involving financial products and market activity. Our cross-disciplinary transactional, regulatory, and dispute capabilities help protect value, manage risk, and maintain momentum through market volatility.

Financial markets will continue to evolve – and your ability to adapt will shape your success. Our financial services lawyers bring a practical, integrated approach to banking and financial services law. We develop strategies that support capital strategy, transaction execution, and long-term growth.

McDermott Will & Schulte provides comprehensive legal counsel to companies with interests in a broad range of TMT-related sectors, including mobile and fixed-line telephony, cable and satellite television, entertainment, film production and financing, software, hardware, outsourcing and telematics. In this complex arena, there is no substitute for firsthand experience: our lawyers have worked for years with TMT companies, in private practice and as in-house counsel.

We advise on mergers, acquisitions and other major transactions, negotiate and draft licensing, end-user and e-commerce agreements, consult on IT outsourcing projects, and provide guidance on regulatory compliance and government lobbying. We have significant international experience, having represented numerous companies in the process of entering and diversifying into North America, Asia, Europe and other international communications, media and technology markets.

Our lawyers have extensive experience representing telecommunications clients in major infrastructure and technology-development transactions, as well as traditional corporate transactions such as mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic alliances, divestitures and spin-offs. We help clients structure deals in a manner that takes full advantage of new business models, protects intellectual property assets, maximizes returns on investments, and minimizes legal, commercial and regulatory risks.

Our lawyers work closely with colleagues throughout the firm’s offices and in other practice areas to provide our clients with a fully integrated approach to solving their legal challenges, wherever their business interests take them. Over the years, we have developed specific skills involving internet-related issues and technologies, including VoD, IPTV and VoIP. We have counseled companies across the spectrum of IT-related matters, and have drafted and negotiated numerous general software license, maintenance and support, ASP, VAR, end-user license, technical and professional service, CRM services, consulting partner, software development and software project agreements.

We also advise on agreements in relation to content distribution, search distribution, co-branding, cross promotion, web design, web hosting, hotline services and other internet backbone agreements. Our lawyers have extensive experience in copyright, data protection, antitrust and competition law, as well as general commercial law, and broadcast and media regulation. When disputes arise, we offer full-spectrum litigation and alternative dispute resolution advice on all regulatory and strategic questions relating to this constantly evolving market.

Our lawyers have structured, negotiated, and closed billions of dollars in telecom, AI, and technology transactions worldwide. With more than three decades of experience in this area, we deliver commercially focused guidance to structure and execute complex digital infrastructure transactions.

We are routinely engaged by leading technology companies on matters involving AI-driven infrastructure and connectivity. Our lawyers understand the critical role of hardware, software, connectivity, data centers, and power in these transactions. We guide developers, operators, and investors through high-value transactions that support their strategic investments in AI.

We have deep knowledge of the factors that drive value in digital infrastructure real estate – including site selection, power access, land use, and long-term scalability. We help clients structure and execute real estate transactions that support performance and growth.

Our lawyers advise on institutional investments, joint ventures, large-scale developments, leasing, and asset management, including matters involving real estate investment trusts. We also support complex, multijurisdictional portfolios, helping clients capitalize on opportunities across markets.

As counsel to the sector’s most active project sponsors, lenders, investors, owners, developers, and management companies, we are trusted to guide sophisticated and complex real estate transactions.

We advise across the life cycle of data center and connectivity projects, whether you are an owner, operator, investor, lender, developer, or customer – including hyperscalers. Our lawyers help you navigate a fast-changing energy and regulatory landscape.

We understand how digital infrastructure assets operate – how data centers are run, how service level agreements function, and how financial and operational dynamics drive value. We draw on that knowledge when guiding your infrastructure transactions, translating complex technical considerations into legal structures that support your business goals.