John D. Franchini, Milbank LLP Global Corporate/M&A partner and co-head of Milbank’s Global Infrastructure practice, was named Energy M&A Lawyer of the Year at the IJGlobal Investor Awards Americas. The award recognizes an M&A lawyer for outstanding expertise and impact in providing legal counsel for energy sector transactions and ensuring successful deal execution and regulatory compliance. The judges highlighted Mr. Franchini’s “clear M&A expertise and leadership” and “demonstrated fluency across infrastructure verticals,” with one judge noting, “John has demonstrable success and impact through scale of energy transactions…the innovation involved is implied by the scale of these transactions and that they were executed in spite of volatile and uncertain market conditions.” Mr. Franchini is additionally noted for his “highly commercial and pragmatic” approach to problem solving, as well as his reputation for being “efficient and reliable in bringing high-profile M&A transactions to a successful close.” Mr. Franchini has extensive experience representing infrastructure, sovereign wealth, private equity, hedge and pension funds, together with their portfolio companies, in investment, acquisition, recapitalization, disposition and strategic joint venture transactions. He also has significant transactional experience involving core and non-core infrastructure assets, power generation and transmission assets, midstream natural gas pipelines, telecommunications business and other digital infrastructure assets, including regulated businesses. His recent energy transactions include advising the co-owners of Colonial Enterprises, which holds the Colonial Pipeline, the largest refined products system in the US, in the sale of 100% of their shares in Colonial Enterprises to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and its institutional partners for approximately $9 billion; Blackstone Credit & Insurance as investor consortium leader of a $7 billion investment in Sempra Infrastructure Partners’ Port Arthur LNG Phase 2; and Energy Capital Partners in its acquisition of Lightstone, a portfolio containing a 2.6 GW coal-fired plant and 3 gas-fired plants in Indiana and Ohio, from Blackstone and ArcLight Capital. Read Mr. Franchini’s full profile here.