Jeffrey Wood, a retired partner with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, was a member of the firm’s Corporate Group with experience in a broad range of corporate finance and project finance transactions, from representing institutional investors in private placements to lenders, owner or developers in complex domestic and international project financings, and borrowers and lenders in complex workouts. Mr. Wood worked with numerous private equity funds investing in Asia, and private equity fund sponsors in the formation of Asian-focused funds.
Mr. Wood was Head of the firm’s corporate finance practice in the early 1990’s. In 1993, as principal reporter for the CIGNA-John Hancock-Metropolitan Life Private Placement Enhancement Project, Mr. Wood developed documentation to simplify the access of domestic and foreign issuers to the US private placement market. This effort, continued by others after he moved to Hong Kong, resulted in the publication of a range of standardized forms for unsecured insurance company private placements that are still in use today.
Mr. Wood moved to Asia in early 1994 to open the firm’s Hong Kong office. While in Hong Kong, Mr. Wood worked on project financings, private equity investments, corporate and project finance workouts throughout Asia. He assisted China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and the State Tax Administration in revising the country’s rules regarding the formation and taxation of onshore private venture capital funds, and worked with fund sponsors seeking to establish onshore funds under the revised rules.
Since 2008, Mr. Wood has been an active pro bono volunteer with the International Senior Lawyers Project (www.islp.org), spending several hundred hours a year assisting the Government of Liberia in a variety of matters relating to the development of mineral and petroleum resources in Liberia. Most recently, he has assisted in the revision of the country's petroleum law and the comprehensive renegotiation of the national oil company's agreements with its offshore seismic survey contractor.
Mr. Wood joined Debevoise in 1971 and became a partner in 1978. A member of the bar in the District of Columbia and New York, as well as the International and Inter-Pacific Bar Associations, he graduated from Princeton University in 1963 with his A.B., read economics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1963-1965, and graduated from Yale Law School in 1968. Mr. Wood initially worked in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and then directed a study on “Decentralizing New York City Government” for the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The Legal Media Group’s “Guide to the World’s Leading Project Finance Lawyers” recommended Mr. Wood as a leading project finance lawyer.