Legal and Tax Structuring of Investment Project

STRATO Investments offers legal services to its clients to make sure they pass the legal lithmus test of compliance and make sure they are structured legally in a way it benefits the project. Since every project is different, having an expert on the team like Harold can greatly benefit the investor’s entity.

Harold Wouters is on point for our STRATO team to aid investors and project owners in two respects.

With STRATO, Harold first qualifies opportunities with an eye on compliance and legal matters that may impact the investment now and in the future. This warrants that the investments that are proposed by STRATO meet all legal requirements and contractual obligations our investors and project partners aim for.

Secondly, Harold also advises clients as to the legal and tax structuring and assembling of international projects. This requires technical skills, creativity, out-of-the-box thinking. The end purpose is definitely creation of value for both the investors and the projects sponsor, in a win-win approach. In any event, it requires pluri-disciplinary team work, mobilizing the skills of all members of our STRATO team. The way to a maximizing of the value for both the investors and the sponsors of a project certainly goes through corporate finance and, for certain projects, through project finance (i.e. the financing of projects based upon a non-recourse or limited recourse financial structure, in which project debt and equity used to finance the project are paid back from the cash flow generated by the project). Both corporate finance and project finance imply a full range of essential legal and tax issues (network of contracts, corporate finance law, banking law, sureties such as pledges, mortgages and guarantees, international tax structuring, etc.),

Harold has been a lawyer (both at the bar and in private practice) for 30 years (including 4 years as a partner of the U.S. law firm Dorsey & Whitney LLP and 10 years as a partner of the English law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP). His practice includes corporate & project finance (including private equity, setting-up of investment funds, project finance and asset-backed financing); insolvency law; securities laws; mergers & acquisitions (including take-over bids and acquisition finance); privatisation of security in airports; renewable energy law.

Harold has been a director of the European Biomass Industry Association since 2001. In this context, he has acquired an intimate knowledge of the biomass sector and has built up an extensive network of contacts in the biomass community.