Protect clients against environmental liabilities when buying or selling a business or real estate

Counsel lenders and borrowers about environmental liabilities in connection with loan agreements

Counseling with respect to Securities Offerings and Securities Reporting

Negotiating Environmental Insurance Policies

Negotiating Environmental Service Contracts

Creative Solutions to Environmental Issues in Deals

We represent all parties involved in domestic and international corporate and real estate transactions, including buyers, sellers, lenders, investors, officers, directors, and financial advisors. Our transactions involve all types of industries, including manufacturing, financial institutions, food, retail, real estate, and chemical. Our clients include investors, such as private equity firms, and strategic buyers seeking to expand or refocus their market share. While the nature and scope of our advice varies depending on the type of business or client involved, we generally conduct due diligence investigations to evaluate the environmental liabilities of businesses or properties that may be acquired or divested; quantify liabilities in the context of the client’s overall business strategy; advise clients on contract language to protect them in transactions involving the purchase or sale of assets or stock; and negotiate environmental contract provisions, agreements and disclosures. Sometimes our counseling causes clients to forego opportunities due to the magnitude of the risk in contrast to the benefits or the potential negative publicity. When a transaction closes, we often assist the client in addressing issues raised in the diligence.

We represent a large number of financial institutions which provide all types of financing arrangements. In these transactions, we advise lenders on contract language in loan agreements that will protect their interests against the risks created by their borrowers’ environmental liabilities; and advise borrowers on how to negotiate with their lenders about environmental risks.

Our environmental lawyers counsel our institutional lending and underwriting clients. This work often includes overseeing diligence, quantifying risks to borrowers, issuers, and lenders, negotiating loan documents, assisting in the client’s participation and syndication efforts, and evaluating the adequacy of disclosure in public filings.

Counsel clients on how to describe environmental liabilities in connection with securities’ offerings and with periodic reporting to the SEC; represent both issuers and underwriters. In the wake of Sarbanes Oxley and the call for greater transparency, we are monitoring the potential implications of climate control legislation and long term costs on disclosure obligations.

Advise and negotiate client insurance policies, thereby managing environmental risks as well as facilitating transaction closings.

On behalf of clients, we negotiate contracts with environmental service providers, such as remediation contractors.

Weil is experienced in finding creative approaches to structuring transactions to address environmental risks, thereby preventing these issues from unnecessarily derailing good deals that benefit our clients’ interests.