Joel Friley is a partner in the firm’s Project Finance and Development Group, resident in the San Francisco office. Joel focuses in project development and finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate/commercial transactions, and financing matters, typically involving multiple parties in different jurisdictions and complex legal and business issues.
His practice also includes cross-border transactions between the United States and Canada, including advising on the different legal customs and practices between these jurisdictions and how such customs and practices may impact these transactions.
Joel plays a lead role in the structuring, negotiation, documentation and implementation of transactions, managing legal teams with the necessary expertise to bring such transactions to fruition and providing strategic advice and counsel to the firm’s clients in the course of doing so. He also provides ongoing advice and support in respect of such transactions.
Joel originally joined Morrison & Foerster in 1980 in the San Francisco office, moving to the firm's London office in 1985 and to its New York office in 1987, when the office first opened. He left New York to return home and joined a major international law firm in Calgary, Canada as a partner in 1996, where he continued his project development and finance practice as Chair of the Project Development and Finance Group and was involved in significant firm management and committee roles. Joel rejoined the firm in 2011.
Joel is admitted to practice in California, New York, Ontario and Alberta.
Project Development & Finance
Joel’s project development and finance experience includes (i) renewable energy projects (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass, and landfill gas), (ii) conventional fuel projects (oil sands, gas, coal and waste coal) and (iii) P3 (public-private partnership) infrastructure projects (hospitals and other governmental facilities).
Joel represents project owners, sponsors and developers (both individually and as joint venture participants/partners), equity investors, lenders (including banks, institutional lenders and other commercial lenders), governmental agencies, industrial hosts and contractors. He advises clients in respect of the acquisition, development, financing, re-financing, restructuring, and disposition of energy and infrastructure projects, and in the supply of equipment and services (including engineering, procurement, construction, and construction management services) to energy and infrastructure projects.
Joel has extensive experience representing and advising all of the various parties to project agreements, including: project development agreements; off-take contracts; engineering, procurement and construction contracts; operation and maintenance agreements; utility supply contracts; interconnect agreements; sole and joint bidding agreements; joint venture agreements; shareholders' agreements; LLC agreements; and purchase and sale agreements (representing purchasers and sellers of both assets and equity interests).
Joel has also worked extensively with Native American Tribes (i.e. First Nations Bands in Canada) on energy projects.
Mergers & Acquisitions; Corporate/Commercial Transactions
Joel's mergers and acquisitions and corporate/commercial practice includes the acquisition and disposition of privately and publicly held companies and other general corporate/commercial transactions in numerous areas other than those described above. Joel has been lead counsel in a number of transactions involving the formation and representation of joint ventures and partnerships, as well as equity investments, restructurings, and recapitalizations.
Financings
Joel’s experience in financing matters includes representing bank syndicates, banks, institutional investors, other commercial lenders and borrowers in connection with project financings, credit-enhanced transactions, structured financings, acquisition financings, asset-based financings, trade finance, public financings, restructurings, and workouts.