John has expertise in all aspects of corporate law, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity venture capital, corporate restructuring and reorganisations, joint ventures, and governance matters.
He has a wide range of clients: he has acted on high-profile transactions for the Scottish National Investment Bank, Epic Games, TV Squared, Two Big Ears, Offshore Wind Power, Outer Dowsing, Acciona, EDPR, Adarma and TMC Pharma, among others. He is active in the Scottish business community, and in his pro bono work for accelerators he mentors several ambitious entrepreneurs. John also launched, and now leads, our Start to Scale initiative.
John advises clients across several sectors, with a particular focus on renewables (he leads our onshore renewable sector), technology, life sciences and other high-growth companies (he has acted for many such companies), and private equity and venture capital (he has acted for many development banks and European private equity houses on funding arrangements).
Renewables
- Acting for a significant renewable energy developer in relation to its development joint venture with REG.
- Acting for EDPR on the acquisition of five Scottish onshore wind projects.
- Acting for Vattenfall on its joint venture arrangements for Ourack Wind Farm.
- Acting for an onshore wind developer on over 30 separate sales of onshore wind projects.
- Acting for Viking Energy on its arrangement for Viking Wind Farm.
- Acting for RPPL on the acquisition, development and sale of certain reserve generation and BESS assets.
- Acting on the acquisitions of four reserve power plants, being Ashford Power Ltd, Brecon Power Ltd, Beaufort Power Ltd and Wednesbury Power Ltd, from First Gen.
- Acting for Eider Investors on the sale of a number of energy projects.
- Acting for a major European developer on the proposed acquisition of one of the largest portfolios of BESS projects to come to market in the UK to date.
- Acting for Cierco on the acquisition of SBM Renewables’ interest in Floventis Energy, the joint venture undertaking the Llyr (Celtic Sea) and Cademo (California) floating offshore wind projects.
- Acting for Offshore Wind Power Limited on the 2GW West of Orkney Wind Farm involving Corio, Total and RIDG.
- Acting for SMartwind and each of the SMartwind project companies on the investment into the Zone by Ørsted as well as the eventual sale of the Zone to Ørsted.
Technology, life sciences and other high-growth companies
- Acting for TV Squared in its sale to NASDAQ-listed Innovid.
- Acting for FanDuel Limited on its sale to Flutter.
- Acting for Two Big Ears on its sale to Facebook.
- Acting for TMC Pharma on the £18m investment into the company by LDC.
- Acting for Cytochroma, Serene and Valla on all of their investment to date.
Private equity and venture capital
- Advising the Scottish National Investment Bank and others on the £16.7 million investment into spaceflight company Orbex.
- Advising Old College Capital on its a number of investments.
John has acted on the most high profile transactions in the sectors he focuses on, including for the Scottish National Investment Bank, Epic Games, FanDuel, Adarma, EDPR, Five Estuaries, SMartWind and the West of Orkney Windfarm.
John is extremely active in the Scottish business community and, in his spare time, assists a number of ambitious entrepreneurs scale their businesses internationally through the RBS Entrepreneur Accelerator, Bright Red Triangle, Launch.ed and the National Launch Academy by Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult. John leads our Start to Scale initative (https://shepwedd.com/start-to-scale).
