Charles Whitney

Practice Areas

Charles Whitney is a banking lawyer based in London. He is focused on energy project finance and project development. He advises developers, commercial banks and export credit agencies/multilateral financing institutions on power, renewables, petrochemicals and oil and gas projects in emerging markets.

He is described as having a "diplomatic result-driven approach" and works on projects located in the EMEA region, Africa, South America and Central Asia. Most of his work involves advising on complex, multi-sourced project financings involving multiple export credit agencies/multilateral financing institutions.

He has been advising companies through the Energy Transition for a number of years as the market shifts towards cleaner energy. His work includes advising international oil and gas and other energy companies as they grow their renewable energy portfolios, as well as advising smaller companies focused solely on the renewables sector.

In the power and renewables sectors, he has advised both developers and lenders/ECAs on project financings of numerous IPPs, as well as on merchant power projects, including on CCGT, solar and wind projects and LNG-to-power.

In the oil and gas sector, he has spent many years advising on the development of the Southern Gas Corridor gas and pipeline project, which brings natural gas from Azerbaijan to Italy. He has advised export credit agencies and lenders on multiple petrochemical projects, including on a US$4 billion petrochemical project financing in Central Asia (the largest project financing in the region, to date). He has advised on LNG projects in Nigeria, the Middle East and the Caribbean and has advised on upstream oil and gas financings in Kuwait, Nigeria, Ghana, Central Asia and Venezuela.

Charles has a unique practice advising on export credit agency financings. Nearly all of his transactions involve one or more export credit agencies and complex intercreditor arrangements.

From 2003 until 2005 he was based in our office in Milan.

Charles graduated with honors from the Business School and Law School at the University of Georgia and obtained an LLM with honors from the London School of Economics. He is qualified to practise in England and New York.