Practice areas

Energy; power generation & distribution; infrastructure; utilities regulation; M&A; corporate law

Introduction

The managing partner of the firm, Roderico Puno, graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University College of Arts and Sciences with a degree in political science in 1985, and a Bachelor of laws degree from the same university in 1989. He obtained his master of laws (with honors) from Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago Illinois and was admitted as a partner in the firm in 1995.

From 2001 to 2003, Puno served as vice president-legal for First Philippine Holdings Corporation, a conglomerate engaged in power distribution, power generation, manufacturing, and real estate development. He was included in a team that handled the USD500 million debt restructuring of the parent corporation and other affiliates, being in charge of the Philippine law aspects of the deal. From 2006 to 2014, Puno served as Director of Global Business Power, the power investment arm of the Metrobank/Ty Group, and from 2011-2017, he served as director of GT Capital Holdings, the listed holding company of all the interests of the Ty family in Metrobank, Federal Land, Toyota, and other affiliates of the group.

Puno served as corporate secretary of BDO Private Bank from 2004 to 2012, BDO Securities Corporation from 2011 to 2012, Atlas Consolidated and Mining and Development Corporation from 2006 to 2021, and First Philippine Industrial Park from 1996 to 2018. From 2012 to 2014, he served as assistant corporate secretary of Metropolitan Bank and Trust Company.

Puno currently specialises in energy law, corporation law, banking, project finance, real estate, utilities regulation, privatisation, securities, and infrastructure project development. He is leading authority on Philippine energy law practice, having been in the technical working group of the Committee on Energy of the Philippine Congress, representing the private sector that drafted the Electric Power Industry Reform Act, the primary law governing the energy industry in the Philippines. Puno has been engaged as a public-private partnership (PPP) key legal expert of the Philippine Public-Private Partnership Centre and the Department of Public Works and Highways in connection with the bidding for the development and operation of an expressway-dike project.

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