Key Contacts: Anna Hickey – Partner
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Anna Hickey to lead the M&A activities of its award-winning climate finance team.
With an extensive background in both carbon markets and corporate law, Anna will bring that experience to this rapidly evolving intersection of climate change mitigation and corporate transactions and will focus on expanding the M&A side of the team to meet the demands of the increased M&A work hitting their desks.
Anna Hickey commented, “We expect investors to start coming back to the table through a combination of debt and, increasingly equity investments, including through acquisitions of talented teams with decades of experience in mitigation activity design, structuring and development. The intersection of climate and M&A presents extraordinary opportunities and I look forward to helping clients navigate deals from large-scale investments to complex corporate deals with the net-zero transition at their core”.
Philip Lee’s climate finance team has tripled in size over the past year and was awarded Best Law Firm (Voluntary Carbon Market) by Environmental Finance for 2023 and 2024. Head of Climate Finance Lev Gantly is the only Irish lawyer to be ranked as a global market leader in Chambers Global – Climate Change. The team specialises in providing multi-jurisdictional legal, regulatory, policy and transactional advice in relation to climate change, with a particular focus on climate projects, carbon markets, and sustainable aviation fuels.
Despite the well-documented challenges in the carbon markets over the past two years, the team has seen a notable uptick in project investment and deal activity in the VCM in 2024, as companies sought to consolidate their positions in a market characterised by fluctuating demand, regulatory changes, and increasing climate-related pressures. Conclusion of the Article 6 rulebook in Baku paves the way for increased investment in mitigation activities in developing economies as well as increased trading activity.
Massive Growth
The firm has experienced massive growth in recent years and currently has 10 M&A partners and a total team of 30 in corporate transactions. Over the next number of years, the firm plans to double that to 50 and build on the momentum of the Irish M&A market and client demand for experienced and specialist transaction teams.
Head of Corporate and M&A Eoghan Doyle, commented, “We are very fortunate to have a globally recognised leading climate finance legal team. We foresee a wave of increased activity in M&A in this space. Having worked with our climate finance team for several years, Anna Hickey is very well placed to lead this client offering”.
The Philip Lee M&A team was ranked #5 legal advisor by deal count in the Mergermarket, Global and Regional M&A Rankings 2024 Report and ranked #2 M&A legal advisor in the Experian Market IQ Report, Q1, 2024.
