Covington offers a full range of legal services to biofuels companies around the world, including those developing, investing in, acquiring and commercializing technologies that use biomass to produce advanced biofuels and other renewable industrial chemicals. These companies confront a challenging set of environmental, regulatory, intellectual property, antitrust, tax, financing, corporate and other legal issues. We represent companies at all stages in the growth cycle -- from start-up companies that are venture-backed to major multinationals interested in commercializing emerging technologies in this arena.
Covington, with its international experience and presence, regulatory depth, corporate and transactional expertise, and industry savvy, is well-positioned to advise clients on their critical and complex matters as well as their more routine matters. We do so efficiently and expeditiously and assemble cross-disciplinary teams to best suit a client’s particular legal needs. We provide our clients with regulatory and legislative advice to help them understand and influence the evolving regulatory framework on biofuels. Finally, our substantive expertise in a number of unique areas, such as securities, export control, and antitrust make Covington well suited to serve a wide range of legal needs relating to the biofuels business.
Representative Matters
Our attorneys have represented biofuels companies as well as their underwriters, investors and other capital sources on a range of matters for the biofuels industry, including with regard to ethanol, algal-based and advanced celluosic fuels. The list below is illustrative of our attorneys’ current and past engagements.
Transactional
- Amyris, Inc. in collaborations and joint ventures relating to renewable chemicals and fuels.
- Babcock & Brown in the development and project financing of ethanol facilities.
- ExxonMobil on algal-based biofuels matters, including its Synthetic Genomics collaboration.
- LanzaTech in its venture financing, joint ventures and other corporate arrangements.
- Solazyme in various licensing and collaboration transactions.
- UBS as underwriter in a public offering of GEVO and other pending public offerings, including several private placements.
- Vantage Point Venture Partners on its investment in Cobalt Technologies.
- A Brazilian biofuels company in connection with its secured export financing facility.
- An international company on due diligence relating to an algae-based biofuels company.
Regulatory and Government Policy
- Amyris, Inc. regarding antitrust and competition law, EU chemicals regulations (including “REACH”) and other European distribution arrangements and other areas where we have specialized expertise.
- Deutsche Asset Management on regulatory aspects of a biofuels project in Latin America.
- Los Angeles County Transit System on alternative fuel incentives.
- A client on environmental matters relating to building a biofuels manufacturing plant on contaminated property on a waterway in New Jersey.
- An investment fund regarding regulatory and legislative advice regarding biofuel plants in connection with the European Union’s review of its Renewable Energies Directive and the adoption of sustainability criteria for biofuels.
- An investment fund regarding regulatory due diligence advice on the EU and UK rules on biofuels in connection with a potential acquisition of a biomass manufacturer.
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