Team size: Six

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have been involved in over the past year?

Peak Energy has 90 professionals in eight countries involved in renewables investment, development and operations, primarily in solar, onshore wind and energy storage. Peak Energy is backed by StonePeak Infrastructure Partners and was created in 2020. The initial investments were in UPP projects Korea and Japan.

Since late 2023 Peak Energy has expanded its strategy in terms of location, point of entry in the investment cycle and product offering. A regional HQ has been established in Singapore and additional offices opened in Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and India. Peak also has assets in Taiwan and Australia. The interest in UPP projects has been maintained but the focus has changed to making co-investments earlier in the development process to add greater value. The ability to develop and operate distributed generation projects to commercial and industrial customers has been added to the offering.

From the legal side we support this expansion through the acquisition of assets (single or portfolios) or entry into joint ventures. The business also develops self-sourced opportunities. For the legal team on acquisitions and JVs this means working closely with the business to develop processes for internal pre-bid due diligence feeding into the bid process. For distributed generation, the legal team has been the driver for developing precedent documentation for all our target markets. This involves localising documents where helpful to improve ease of contracting whilst trying to minimize differences across jurisdictions to make risk assessment easier.

What innovations have you made to the way your legal team works in the past year?

There was no legal team at Peak until we arrived in late 2023. We have had the luxury of being able to design a team and processes which work better for the business and with the aim of making legal an enabler rather than a brake on doing business. One of the earliest and easiest wins was automating our NDAs. By doing so we have allowed the sales team to “self-serve” and create drafts for potential clients. Legal only gets involved if changes are requested and do not fall on an approved list or if a client insists on using its own form.

Automation has expanded to other contract types and we regularly add contract types when we see a repeat need or there is a request by the business. The overriding aim is to allow ease and speed of initial contracting in a competitive market whilst reducing risk.

We are also testing a data extraction and information collation tool to assist with pre-bid due diligence. The questions we ask are developed with the business and feed into their financial analysis. The automated output will not replace internal review or the external law firm due diligence process. The purpose is to allow legal to assist the business in making a first offer and hone the key areas of review needed by external counsel at the next stage of the bid process.

Based on your experience, what is the key to collaborating successfully with business partners?

 It is the same as being on a first date. Listen. Make it all about them.

Saying no is fine, but make sure you have a good reason.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives you would like to highlight?

The legal team has implemented and provided training on a firmwide Code of Conduct for our employees. We have also developed a Code of Conduct for our business partners which is available on our website and referenced in our contractual relationships. We have run the implementation and testing of a firmwide interactive third party due diligence system