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Portrait of Danielle Heath

Danielle Heath

Partner

CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP
Cannon Place
78 Cannon Street
London
EC4N 6AF
United Kingdom
Languages English

Danielle Heath is a Corporate partner specialising in infrastructure and renewable energy transactions, acting for institutional investors and developers in the infrastructure and energy sectors. She advises on a broad range of corporate work, including acquisitions and disposals (including auction processes and portfolio transactions), joint ventures, corporate governance and the shareholder aspects of project based transactions. Danielle has a core focus on transactions involving renewable energy assets and projects in the UK and abroad, including advising on M&A transactions relating to in development, under construction and operational projects and infrastructure projects (including broadband, fibre, PPP, water and other core-infrastructure). 

Danielle is the co-head of the CMS Institutional Investors Sector group and she was ranked in the 2020 “A Word about Wind” Legal Power List, which sets out the top 100 lawyers globally (covering both private practice and in-house counsel) working in the wind sector. 

She is the firm’s relationship partner for InfraRed Capital Partners Limited, John Laing Limited and Low Carbon Limited.

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Relevant experience

  • TRIG on investments in offshore and onshore wind farms in the UK and Europe, including most recently: (i) the indirect acquisition from Global lnfrastructure Partners of a 12.5% interest in the 1,218 MW Hornsea 1 offshore wind farm; (ii) the indirect acquisition of an interest in the 714 MW East Anglia ONE offshore wind farm from GIG and the related consortium arrangements; (iii) the indirect acquisition from Global Infrastructure Partners of a 25% indirect interest in the 330 MW Gode Wind 1 offshore wind farm located in the German North Sea; and (iv) the acquisition of the Little Raith onshore windfarm.
  • EDF Renewables UK on the sale of a 49% interest in Blyth I offshore wind farm to Tenaga Nasional Berhad. Blyth I is a 41.5-MW operational windfarm and the joint venture has development rights for the Blyth floating offshore wind farm project with a planned capacity of up to 58.4 MW.
  • A bidder in the proposed acquisition of an interest in Burbo Bank offshore wind farm from PKA.
  • Aviva Infrastructure Fund on their onshore wind farm joint venture with Fred.Olsen and various renewable energy investments.
  • Aviva Infrastructure Fund on their broadband infrastructure investments in TrueSpeed, County and ITS in the UK and additional funding rounds.
  • InfraRed since 2008, including on their recent fibre broadband infrastructure opportunities (including the recent investment in CTG) and on acquisitions in numerous health, social and transport infrastructure assets, both in the UK and abroad.
  • John Laing since 2012, including most recently on recent fibre broadband opportunities and on: (i) numerous onshore wind farm disposals in the UK and in France; (ii) numerous infrastructure disposals to JLIF and; (iii) on the sale of the seed portfolio renewable energy assets to the then newly formed JLEF.
  • A developer on the sale of a number of battery storage projects in development in the UK.
  • A bidder on the proposed investment in Yunlin offshore wind farm in Taiwan.
  • Low Carbon on general corporate matters including acquisitions, disposals, commercial framework agreements with developers and joint ventures to develop renewable energy projects in the UK (including with Vitol and Macquarie) and the recent acquisition of an interest in a large Eastern European onshore wind farm in development.
  • A Japanese investor in the proposed investment in a portfolio of assets from Cubico.
  • Repsol on the disposal of Beatrice and Inch Cape offshore wind farm to SDIC.
  • An investor in relation to the acquisition of a water company in the UK.
  • Equinor on the acquisition of Dudgeon offshore wind farm in the UK and an offshore wind farm investment opportunity in the UK.
  • A pension fund manager on a cornerstone investment in a new £550m infrastructure fund established and managed by InfraRed Capital Partners and on its investment (as sole investor) in a large UK solar portfolio managed by Octopus Investments.
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Memberships & Roles

  • Co-head of the CMS Institutional Investors Sector group.
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Publications

  • PLC International Joint Ventures Manual - co-author
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Education

  • LLM (Kings College, London) 
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Feed

09/08/2022
CMS ad­vises con­sor­ti­um on ac­quis­i­tion of fur­ther in­vest­ment in Ørsted's...
In­ter­na­tion­al law firm CMS has ad­vised a con­sor­ti­um com­prised of Equitix and The Re­new­ables In­fra­struc­ture Group (TRIG) on its agree­ment to ac­quire from Glob­al In­fra­struc­ture Part­ners (GIP) a fur­ther...
22/03/2022
CMS ad­vises con­sor­ti­um on ac­quis­i­tion of in­terest in Ørsted’s 1.2-GW Hornsea...
In­ter­na­tion­al law firm CMS has ad­vised a con­sor­ti­um com­prised of The Re­new­ables In­fra­struc­ture Group and Equitix on its agree­ment to ac­quire a 12.5% in­terest in the Hornsea One Off­shore Wind Farm from...
31/01/2022
Time for trans­ition: En­ergy M&A 2022
While world lead­ers have been gath­er­ing for COP meet­ings for dec­ades, what made COP26 per­haps par­tic­u­larly not­able is that the private sec­tor also gathered in force, and with a com­mit­ment and de­term­in­a­tion to be a key driver in the de­car­bon­isa­tion of the world’s eco­nom­ies.  In pre­vi­ous years, there have been mur­mur­ings from vari­ous cor­por­ates that to make so­cial or en­vir­on­ment­ally driv­en in­vest­ment de­cisions may not align with their fi­du­ciary duty to act in the in­terests of share­hold­ers. As share­hold­er act­iv­ism has driv­en the de­bate in­to board­rooms from above, this at­ti­tude is rap­idly re­vers­ing dir­ec­tion. While re­turns are gen­er­ally seen as lower in the clean sec­tor com­pared to, say, the oil & gas sec­tor, be­ing in­ves­ted in the green trans­ition is in­creas­ingly seen as a key route to pre­serving and pro­tect­ing share­hold­er value. At the same time, vol­un­tary and man­dat­ory cli­mate re­lated dis­clos­ures are align­ing the drivers for in­vestors across the board so that cap­it­al is in­creas­ingly driv­en by the met­rics they pro­duce.  This is be­ing re­flec­ted in, among oth­er things, the plum­met­ing cost of cap­it­al for green in­vest­ments. At the same time high car­bon in­tens­ive in­vest­ments, such as coal based pro­jects and busi­nesses, are strug­gling to se­cure fund­ing, with many fa­cing in­solv­ency. In­vest­ments in the en­ergy trans­ition, a key part of the green trans­ition, will prin­cip­ally take the form of M&A. The out­come of COP26 and the mo­mentum it has gen­er­ated means that European deal­makers in the en­ergy sec­tor will be even busier in 2022. Europe leads the world in the en­ergy trans­ition and the race to net zero is driv­ing near-re­cord levels of deal­mak­ing – not­ably in wind and sol­ar photo­vol­ta­ic gen­er­a­tion.At the same time, the en­ergy trans­ition is both ex­pand­ing and frag­ment­ing the en­ergy sec­tor. For many, it has tra­di­tion­ally been fo­cused on en­ergy gen­er­a­tion. The trans­ition is bring­ing to the fore less vis­ible tech­no­lo­gies. Everything from tra­di­tion­al hy­dro­power to grid-scale bat­ter­ies, elec­tri­fic­a­tion of trans­port and hy­dro­gen. It is also bring­ing in­to the mix sec­tors that have not tra­di­tion­ally been fo­cused on en­ergy, such as in­dus­tri­al de­car­bon­isa­tion, ship­ping and min­ing for the nat­ur­al re­sources needed for the en­ergy trans­ition. In par­al­lel with this, there is a huge and grow­ing story around en­ergy trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­bu­tion. Elec­tri­city net­works will need to ex­pand massively to fa­cil­it­ate elec­tri­fic­a­tion and new tech­no­lo­gies. They are also be­com­ing smarter with the use of di­git­al tech­no­logy to op­tim­ise the way power is dis­trib­uted, traded and con­sumed. Fur­ther, new types of net­works may provide in­vest­ment op­por­tun­it­ies for those look­ing for stable long term as­sets, such as hy­dro­gen and car­bon net­works.Against this back­ground, tra­di­tion­al fossil fuel-based play­ers are de­car­bon­ising their op­er­a­tions. For the oil and gas ma­jors, this means ac­quir­ing or sig­ni­fic­antly en­han­cing their cap­ab­il­it­ies in re­new­ables, in­clud­ing wind, sol­ar and hy­dro­gen, while sim­ul­tan­eously di­vest­ing se­lec­ted car­bon-in­tens­ive as­sets in re­sponse to mount­ing ESG pres­sures. This may be one of the reas­ons why 50% of re­spond­ents in our study point to dis­tress-driv­en deals as a top sell-side driver.Change is en­dem­ic in the en­ergy sec­tor, but the cur­rent trans­ition makes the years since lib­er­al­isa­tion of en­ergy mar­kets in the late 1980s seem al­most steady-state in com­par­is­on. Des­pite the mo­mentum and push for cap­it­al to be in­ves­ted in the en­ergy trans­ition, there re­main obstacles, not least the lim­ited pipeline of good qual­ity in­vest­ment op­por­tun­it­ies, con­tinu­ing con­cerns over lock­downs and COV­ID-19 vari­ants, fin­an­cing dif­fi­culties arising from po­ten­tially un­stable long term rev­en­ue streams and di­min­ish­ing rates of re­turn. Not­with­stand­ing these chal­lenges, our study finds that en­ergy sec­tor M&A will in­creas­ingly be an en­gine driv­ing cap­it­al in­to pro­pos­i­tions that match so­cial and polit­ic­al am­bi­tions for the green trans­ition. Key find­ings  En­ergy re­mains a premi­um as­set class for most in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors, with its per­form­ance dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and im­petus from COP26 fur­ther en­han­cing its at­tract­ive­ness75% of en­ergy com­pan­ies are con­sid­er­ing an ac­quis­i­tion and/or di­vest­ment in 2022Along­side premi­um as­sets, in some sub­sect­ors there are un­der­val­ued tar­gets driv­ing buy-side activ­ity, with sellers shed­ding dis­tressed as­sets as the sec­tor shifts in re­sponse to the en­ergy trans­ition45% think COV­ID-19 will be a ma­jor M&A obstacle in 2022, but this re­mains a flu­id situ­ation that can change rap­idly
21/10/2021
CMS ad­vises EDF Re­new­ables UK on new part­ner­ship with VANT­AGE RE
In­ter­na­tion­al law firm CMS has ad­vised EDF Re­new­ables UK, a sub­si­di­ary of the French util­ity com­pany, Élec­tri­cité de France (EDF), on its stra­tegic part­ner­ship with Vant­age RE Ltd (Vant­age RE), a wholly-owned...
09/07/2020
CMS en­joys highest num­ber of UK wind ex­perts ranked in Leg­al Power List...
CMS UK is pleased to an­nounce that three of the firm’s law­yers have been named in A Word About Wind’s Leg­al Power List 2020. The Leg­al Power List ranks the top 100 most in­flu­en­tial law­yers work­ing...
25/09/2019
CMS ad­vises The Re­new­ables In­fra­struc­ture Group Lim­ited on key off­shore...
In­ter­na­tion­al law firm CMS has ad­vised The Re­new­ables In­fra­struc­ture Group Lim­ited (“TRIG”), a fund man­aged by In­fraRed Cap­it­al Part­ners, on the ac­quis­i­tion of a 25% in­dir­ect equity in­terest in Gode...
01/03/2017
CMS ad­vises Low Car­bon on its joint ven­ture with VPI Im­ming­ham in con­nec­tion...
CMS has ad­vised Low Car­bon on its joint ven­ture with VPI Im­ming­ham, own­er of one of the largest com­bined heat and power plants in Europe and part of the Vit­ol Group, to fund early stage en­ergy stor­age...