About

Number of years practice: 19 Principal practice areas: International finance, M&A, project development and finance Bar admissions: Mexico, New York Languages spoken: English, Portuguese and Spanish (native)

Trilingual in English, Spanish and Portuguese, Raquel Bierzwinsky is ‘every inch a Latin America specialist’. Born and raised in Mexico – where she is also qualified to practice – she has additional skill-sets attuned to the Mexican market that few US-based lawyers can match. Her specialist niche is in the structuring and negotiation of multijurisdictional energy and infrastructure project financings, as well as in the acquisition and divestiture of such projects on behalf of project developers, sponsors, commercial lenders, and multilateral and bilateral agencies. Bierzwinsky’s activity in Mexico has only grown since the country’s energy reforms, where her most recent mandates include advising the senior lenders on the $235m financing of the 150MW Solem 1 and 140MW Solem 2 solar photovoltaic projects in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Other work in the energy sector include representing Macquarie Mexican Infrastructure Fund on the financing of the 30MW San Rafael hydroelectric power project in Nayarit and, in conjunction with Macquarie Capital Advisers, on the development and $693m debt financing of a 396MW wind farm in Oaxaca. She has also acted as counsel to both the North American Development Bank and Banco Mercantil del Norte (Banorte), as lenders, in connection with a cross-border financing to Compañía Eólica de Tamaulipas (CETSA) for a 54MW wind project in Tamaulipas, the first-ever bank-funded wind project in northern Mexico. In other work she represented a power generation company on the acquisition and related financing of two combined-cycle plants, one of 271MW the other 252.4MW, in Chihuahua and Campeche, respectively.