Ram Sunkara is a member of Sutherland’s Energy and Environmental Practice Group. His practice focuses on commercial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, project development, power plant construction, joint ventures, operation and maintenance arrangements, and finance transactions involving a wide range of participants in the energy industry.
Ram’s experience includes mergers and acquisitions and joint-venture transactions involving the purchase or sale of energy assets (single units or portfolios); negotiating and drafting power purchase and sale agreements; steam and landfill gas off-take agreements; power plant co-ownership and participation agreements; engineering, procurement and construction contract agreements; operations and maintenance agreements; fuel supply arrangements; a range of secured and unsecured loan and leaseback arrangements; and site access, testing and environmental indemnification agreements. In connection with these transactional matters, he has counseled clients on applicable regulatory schemes such as renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and analyzing risk exposure in connection with the collection, transportation and disposal of hazardous waste. Ram also represents energy traders in physical and financial natural gas and power commodity transactions. His experience also includes the negotiation and documentation of the purchase or sale of environmental attributes such as renewable energy credits and verified emission reduction credits.
Ram’s prior experience includes the representation of publicly held companies and private equity funds in a variety of domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, joint venture, and commercial transactions covering the telecommunications, health care, steel, aviation, apparel, investment management, residential and commercial supply, paperboard container and box manufacturing, information publishing and data collection, franchising, aerospace and pharmaceutical industries.
REPRESENTATIVE EXPERIENCE
Ram’s recent representative experience includes:
Energy
- Representing an independent power producer in the sale of its 1,100 MW portfolio of wind generating assets across the United States.
- Representing a foreign energy company in its bid to acquire the 101 MW South Trent and 79.5 MW Majestic wind farms from Babcock & Brown (now known as Infigen Energy).
- Representing a utility company in its acquisition of an undivided partial interest in a large-scale, coal-fired generating facility including negotiating and documenting co-ownership arrangements, fuel supply arrangements, operation arrangements, ash disposal arrangements and real property documentation.
- Representing a generation and transmission electric cooperative in its acquisition of a simple cycle, gas-fired generating plant with a nominal capacity of 500 MW.
- Representing an independent power company in its bid to acquire an existing 7 MW biomass-fired facility and additional boiler equipment to expand the existing facility’s nameplate capacity to 22 MW.
- Representing a generation and transmission electric cooperative in its acquisition of a 340 MW simple cycle, gas-fired generating plant.
- Representing a generation and transmission electric cooperative in a hybrid short form merger and corporate restructuring involving two gas-fired peaking facilities.
- Representing a project developer in its acquisition of several landfill gas-to-energy projects.
- Representing an owner/operator of combined heat and power (CHP) and district energy facilities acquiring multiple facilities throughout the United States.
- Representing an international water infrastructure company in the sale of several reverse osmosis water treatment plants.
- Representing energy companies and utilities in the negotiation and documentation of long-term water supply and wastewater discharge agreements and related water and wastewater infrastructure permitting, development and construction arrangements.
- Representing a project developer in the development of a pro forma project developer agreement covering rights to develop, construct and maintain electric generation facilties for use in responses to municipal RFP solicitations.
- Representing developers in domestic and international projects to finance, design, construct, operate and maintain electric generation facilities.
- Representing a publicly traded company in biomass projects located across the United States.
- Representing a publicly traded company in its acquisition of methane gas extraction and processing assets and roll-up of landfill gas and waste-to-energy projects.
- Representing co-owners in negotiating, documenting and managing power plant co-ownership and participation arrangements.
- Representing borrowers in government-guaranteed financings for the construction and acquisition of generating facilities and improvements.
- Representing borrowers in Rule 144A bond transactions to finance the construction of electric generating and transmission facilities.
- Representing sellers and purchasers in long-term power sales arrangements for coal, gas, biomass and wind generating facilities.
- Representing commercial lenders in senior, secured syndicated term loan acquisitions.
- Representing a hotel resort development company in negotiating and documenting an operations and maintenance (O&M) agreement in connection with an owned electric generation facility in the Dominican Republic.
- Representing power marketers in connection with the sale of power and capacity under International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and Edison Electric Institute (EEI) documents and in compliance with applicable regionally based regulatory schemes.
- Representing companies in the acquisition and divestiture of electric transmission assets.
Mergers and Acquisitions and General Corporate
- Representing a publicly traded company and its operating subsidiaries in various acquisitions of building supply manufacturers, industrial process businesses and related service companies.
- Representing a foreign corporation in its cross-border acquisition of a U.S.-based company and the negotiation of a worldwide original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement.
- Representing a publicly traded company in a series of roll-up transactions in the wireless telecommunications and disaster recovery industries.
- Representing a private equity fund principally focused on the health care industry in a series of stock purchase transactions.
- Representing a merchant banking and financial advisory firm specializing in corporate restructuring and middle-market companies in the acquisition of a portfolio of companies in the medical industry.
- Representing a top business consultancy in a long-term corporate investigation of a dispute regarding the design and related implementation of new supply-chain technology and performance testing.
- Representing a registered investment advisory firm in a corporate reorganization involving the formation of a special-purpose subsidiary to sell a revenue share interest in the subsidiary’s realized and collected cash flow over a period of time.
- Representing a private equity firm specializing in the acquisition of scalable financial services businesses as regulatory counsel in connection with its acquisition of a company licensed as a money transmitter in several U.S. jurisdictions and with limited operations in Canada.
- Representing a publicly traded company in its procurement of financing necessary to consummate its purchase of more than 30 cellular towers in Texas and Louisiana.
PROFESSIONAL AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
- Board Member, South Asian Bar Association of Georgia (SABA-GA)
- Member, Georgia Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (GIACC)
- Member, Board of Directors, Georgia Asylum & Immigration Network (GAIN)
RECENT PUBLICATIONS AND SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
- Speaker, “Keys to Negotiations,” EUCI’s Mergers and Acquisitions in the Renewable Energy Industry Conference (July 19–20, 2010)
© 2010 Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP