IJGlobal Investor Awards 2025, Americas – Energy M&A Lawyer

John D. Franchini – Milbank partner and co-head of the law firm’s global infrastructure practice – was chosen by the independent panel of judges to win the IJGlobal Investor Awards 2025 trophy for energy M&A lawyer.

The judges were impressed by the Milbank submission with one saying that John had demonstrated “clear M&A expertise and leadership” and another adding that he had “led relevant transactions in the space”.

One of the judges said: “John has demonstrated fluency across infrastructure verticals, but there are some clear transactions where innovative structures were deployed, including the BXCI and aligning interests of the diverse sellers of Colonial Pipeline.”

Another of the judges added: “John has demonstrable success and impact through scale of energy transactions, including the $9 billion sale of the Colonial Pipeline, the Blackstone and EQT JV, Energy Capital Partners acquisition and recapitalization.

“The innovation involved is implied by the scale of these transactions and that they were executed in spite of volatile and uncertain market conditions.”

John has extensive experience representing infrastructure, energy, sovereign wealth, private equity, hedge and pension fund clients, together with their portfolio companies, in M&A, recapitalisation, disposition and strategic joint venture transactions.

He has significant transactional experience involving Core and non-Core infrastructure assets, power generation and transmission assets, midstream natural gas pipelines, telecoms businesses and a range of digital infra assets.

John is known throughout the industry for being highly commercial and a pragmatic problem solver, with a reputation for being efficient and reliable in bringing high-profile M&A transactions to a successful close.

According to the submission: “His commercial and collaborative approach to transaction execution has allowed him to develop an extensive client base within the energy and infrastructure sectors, giving him an unmatched network in the industry that extends globally.

“John’s strategic leadership of Milbank’s global infrastructure practice has led to expansion and influence within emerging geographic markets, in particular Latin America.

“His guidance has been the foundation for the practice’s continued success within the rapidly evolving energy and infrastructure industries and a catalyst for the practice’s expansion into new sectors, including digital infrastructure and data centre development.”

The submission cites a recent closed M&A deal that John worked on – one of the most significant to have concluded in the US – the $9 billion sale of the Colonial Pipeline.

Milbank acted for the vendors of Colonial Enterprises – CDPQ (now La Caisse), IFM Investors, KKR & Co, Koch and Shell – on the sale to Brookfield of the pipeline, a world-class midstream asset spanning some 5,500 miles between Texas and New York.

He also acted for AustralianSuper on its $1.5 billion investment in Databank – part of its $2 billion equity raise to fund the build-out of more than 850MW of data centre capacity to meet accelerated demand for enterprise, cloud and AI workloads.

The team also worked with Energy Capital Partners on its $2.2 billion acquisition of Lightstone, a portfolio containing a 2.6GW coal-fired plant and 3 gas-fired in Indiana and Ohio, from Blackstone and ArcLight.