Andrew Newbery

Andrew's legal career started more than 30 years ago as a paralegal in New York City; he was subsequently called to the New York Bar. Since then he has been a law firm partner based, at various times, in Europe and the Middle East. Andrew's professional experience is detailed here: Andrew Newbery MCIArb | LinkedIn.

Beyond his law firm experience, Andrew has also worked in senior commercial roles. This includes having been Thames Water's Head of Commercial on the procurement of the Thames Tideway Tunnel. After leaving Thames Water (and before joining Gowling), Andrew went on to be one of the three individuals who had the idea for, and did the early development work on, the Euro  2.8+ billion NeuConnect HVDC subsea cable project between Germany and the UK - a project which reached successful project finance close in July 2022 with Gowling WLG advising Andrew and the other originators of the project on their near simultaneous sale of their carry interest.

Andrew is consistently ranked by Legal 500 as a Leading Individual in the Water sector.

To promote Gowling WLG's international, sector-focused approach, Andrew recently became the firm's first Head of Sectors – this recognised Andrew's wealth of commercial and legal experience across many jurisdictions and across many of the firm's sectors. Beyond his fee earning responsibilities, Andrew's Head of Sector role includes promoting our deep sector knowledge through identifying cross-firm opportunities and encouraging cross-firm engagement.

Although Andrew practices as a transactional lawyer, he is also a qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Andrew is part of Gowling WLG's Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) priority initiative. He also enjoys supporting the firm's Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) priority initiative which has included Andrew mentoring the founder of the Black Pounds Project.

Recent transactional experience includes:

  • Andrew has recently (2022) been advising on six project financings in Saudi Arabia, these all include debt capital from Islamic finance institutions.
  • Andrew is the firm's relationship partner for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and is actively involved in a number of UK and international mandates in the nuclear sector.
  • PFI handback / Expiry. Co-lead partner advising authority on the expiry and handback of some of the earliest and largest UK PFIs (2018-2022) such as HMRC's STEPS PFI accommodation project.
  • Recently advised several Japanese-led consortia on the project financing aspects of their bids for power, water and HVDC interconnector projects in the UAE. Andrew has been involved in more than 15 'Abu Dhabi model' I(W)PPs (or equivalent) since 1999.
  • Advised Siemens' consortium on power generation project - the first successful greenfield project financing in Armenia which achieved financial close in 2019 (2017-19).
  • Advised Bacanora on Eurobond project financing of Lithium mine in Mexico which reached financial close in July of last year (2019).
  • Part of team advising Highways England on the procurement of the £1.5+ billion A303 Stonehenge tunnel, including being involved in the development of the initial OBC and the consideration of interface issues with DCO matters being led by a different firm (2018-22).