Jacques Cook
Trainer
Jacques Cook is a legal expert in project finance and Public Private Partnership (PPP) procurement. He has over 30 years’ experience working on project finance transactions for major infrastructure projects in the US and overseas. He is also a seasoned instructor, consultant and advisor in his field.
From 2011 to June 2016, Mr. Cook was Senior PPP Advisor at Tetra Tech’s Institute for Public Private Partnerships (IP3) where he conducted training and other advisory services for governments and international organizations, focusing on legal aspects of PPPs and project finance.
In 2006, Mr. Cook was named a partner at the firm Peckar & Abramson where he advised US contractors and developers in PPP projects in the transportation sector in the US. He subsequently was a Vice President at Castalia Strategic Advisors in its DC office where he carried out consulting assignments for the IFC, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, focused mainly on PPP projects in Africa and Latin America.
As a project finance attorney at the law firm Allen & Overy, LLP in New York from 2001-2006, Mr. Cook handled many PPP infrastructure transactions on behalf of lenders and developers primarily in Chile and Brazil. Two of Mr. Cook’s power projects in Brazil were listed as “Deals of the Year for Latin America” by Project Finance International Magazine. Through this legal work, Mr. Cook has reviewed, drafted and negotiated virtually every type of financing agreement including guarantees, loan agreements, and letters of credit which were applied to enhance and complete the financing package of some of the leading and most complex PPP infrastructure projects in power generation and transmission. He is also well versed on a wide range of thermal, geothermal and hydro power purchase agreements. In Chile, he helped finalize some of the most ambitious and innovative toll road financings which also earned the title “Project Finance Deals of the Year”.
Prior to joining Allen & Overy, Mr. Cook had spent over 23 years as an attorney at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) where he was responsible for all legal work for the IDB’s project finance transactions. At the IDB, he directly managed the legal work and negotiation of 10 major infrastructure projects involving nearly $2.5 billion of investments in the energy, water and sanitation and transportation sectors. He also coordinated IDB negotiations with Governments and private sector participants involving the Multilateral Investment Fund.
Mr. Cook’s main strengths are infrastructure project finance due diligence, contract structuring and analysis, preparation of term sheets for complex transactions, the interplay between project finance and legal risks, instruction and advisory service for governments and private stakeholders and understanding the requirements of key parties for developing winning strategies. He has also lectured and conducted workshops on public-private partnership procurement and financing throughout the world. He has also served as an adjunct professor on project finance at two major universities (Georgetown University and George Mason University).