Patrick is a Visiting Professor and an international transactional lawyer. The focus of his work is advising on and negotiating long term contracts, major project financings, joint ventures, acquisitions, privatisations and deregulation. He has a particular interest in the energy and infrastructure sectors and has been involved in many major innovative energy transactions in developed and emerging markets in the UK, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa (both anglophone and francophone). 

Examples of transactions Patrick has been involved in include the deregulation, privatisation and subsequent reform of the electricity industry in England and Wales; the development of many major independent power projects including the Dabhol project in India, the Kribi and Dibamba projects in Cameroon and the Markbygden wind farm project in Sweden; and the development of major pipelines such as the Nabucco gas pipeline from Turkey to Austria and crude oil pipelines in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.  A number of these were the largest ever foreign investments in the countries concerned. He has also advised on many joint ventures, shareholders agreements and private M&A transactions in these areas.

Patrick was one of the first generation of graduates of the Anglo-French dual law degree programme at King’s and the University of Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne). He obtained his LLB and Maîtrise en Droit in 1982. He was then awarded a Harkness Fellowship to the USA which he spent studying for his LLM at Harvard Law School and as a visiting scholar studying and pursuing research at Berkeley. He remains an enthusiastic supporter of the Anglo-French dual degree programme.

Patrick has been a law firm partner for over 25 years, initially at Freshfields and, currently, at Simmons & Simmons. Legal directories have over the years described him as ‘a great asset in difficult negotiations’ and ‘a very well-respected all-rounder’ who is ‘recommended for his ability to propose very intelligent solutions for resolving complicated legal issues’ (Legal 500 and Chambers). He spent a period practising in Germany when he was managing partner of the Freshfields Frankfurt office and he negotiated the agreements for the firm’s mergers with the German firms Bruckhaus and Deringer. At Simmons he has served two terms of office as a board member and he co-founded the firm’s Africa practice group.

His academic interests include teaching and writing on these areas and on related topics such as negotiations and comparative contract and business law.

Teaching

Patrick teaches a course on comparative electricity law to LLM students and gives seminars on electricity oil and gas law on the Executive LLM programme.