Marta Sánchez Villalta

Marta advises clients on a wide range of project finance, energy and infrastructure transactions. She is a member of the Energy and Infrastructure group based in Madrid.

Marta has extensive experience helping leading energy and construction companies, investment banks and public organisations with domestic and cross-border transactions, including projects, PPP, and developing innovative project financing structures.

Marta’s experience includes advising:

• La Caixa, Banesto and other lenders on the project financing of a 50MW biomass plant in Andalusia sponsored by ENCE
• La Caixa and other lenders on the project financing of a 15MW biomass plant in Castilla La Mancha sponsored by Gestamp
• Gas Natural on the intended acquisition of the wind farm energy business of Babcock & Brown in Portugal
• Eufer on an offer, due diligence process and negotiations related to the potential acquisition of the wind energy business of Nuon España and Desarrollo Eólicos (DESA) (The negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful.)
• Banco Santander on the financing of the acquisition by FCC of the subsidiary of Babcock & Brown that owned the wind energy business in Spain
• A Spanish company and a Japanese company, as sponsors, on the development and financing of a desalination project in Accra, Ghana. 

Accolades

Her expertise in energy and natural resources and project finance is highlighted in several legal directories as Chambers Europe (Spain) and Legal 500. Clients commend her expertise: "She has a lot of experience on other types of deals, very good, used to acting on international transactions with international documentation, very commercial and knows how to get the agreement", "She is tremendously deal-oriented and has excellent expertise", "She's hard-working, conscientious and responsive, also Marta Sánchez Villalta 'demonstrates an extremely good capability for negotiation"

Background

Prior to joining Herbert Smith Freehills, Marta held positions as an associate in energy and infrastructure at another leading international law firm based in Madrid, in the legal department at KPMG, and as a technical adviser for the central government in Madrid.

She has masters degrees in energy (from the Spanish Energy Club) and corporate legal advice (from Instituto de Empresa).