Simmons & Simmons

Projects.

Patrick is an energy and infrastructure partner with thirty years of power, oil and gas and infrastructure experience. He regularly advises investment funds, developers, energy companies, governments and lenders. He acts on a wide range of transactions, covering project development and financing, joint ventures, private M&A, privatisations, commercial contracts and trading and regulatory work. He has a broad-ranging practice in the UK, Western Europe and in emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa and he speaks fluent English, French and German.

Alongside a busy transactional practice, Patrick teaches electricity, oil and gas law as a Visiting Professor of law at King’s College London.

Patrick’s power sector expertise includes thermal, nuclear, renewables and hydro generation, and also covers transmission, supply, distribution, emissions trading, battery storage and corporate PPAs. He was heavily involved in establishing the UK power market at privatisation and in its subsequent reform; and he has worked on many major power projects and acquisitions in the UK, mainland Europe, Africa and Asia since the early 1990s. These include Dabhol in India, Uch in Pakistan, Paiton 2 in Indonesia, Trakya in Turkey, Kribi in Cameroon and many major UK power deals including TXU, Midland Electricity, Teesside and Cottam DC.

Patrick's oil and gas experience includes many major pipelines, such as the Nabucco gas pipeline and the Kenyan crude oil pipeline projects; LNG transactions, refineries, supply contracts, and oil and gas acquisitions.

Patrick has also been involved in many large projects in the infrastructure, transport, public services, defence and other sectors, both internationally and under the UK’s private finance initiative and public private partnership programmes. He has also worked on a number of mining and water sector transactions.

Trained Freshfields; qualified 1987; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer for over 20 years, including partner for 15 years and a period as managing partner of the Frankfurt office; visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley while researching as Harkness Fellow in the US; partner Simmons & Simmons 2007.

Fluent French and German.

King’s College London (1986 first class honours law degree); University of Paris 1 (1982 Maitrise en Droit); Harvard University (1992 LLM).