The international law firm Clifford Chance has advised a consortium consisting of international and national private and public sector financial institutions lead by KfW IPEX-Bank on the refinancing for the construction and operation of the offshore wind park "Merkur" in the North Sea with a volume of about € 1.5 billion.

The Merkur offshore wind park located 45 kilometres north of Borkum is currently under construction and scheduled to be finished in 2019. With 66 wind turbines produced by General Electric, it will have a capacity of up to 396 megawatts, equivalent to the electricity requirements of around 500,000 private households.

The wind park is owned by a consortium of the infrastructure investors Partners Group and InfraRed Capital Partners, DEME Group and General Electric and ADEME as well as the French national energy and infrastructure authority.

The advising international Clifford Chance team for the banking consortium comprised financing specialists partner Beda Wortmann, senior associate Tobias Spahn, associate Julija Haas and transaction lawyer Sonja Lukner (all Project Finance, Frankfurt), as well as partner Markus Muhs (Munich) and senior associate Susanne Werry (Frankfurt) (both Corporate Private Equity) and lawyers from the Clifford Chance offices in Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Paris.