Laura HARDIN

Laura Hardin is a managing director in BRG’s Energy & Climate practice.

Ms. Hardin is regularly recognized among the most highly regarded experts and thought leaders in Who’s Who Legal’s International Arbitration Expert Witnesses and Energy Experts.

Ms. Hardin has been engaged on international arbitration cases brought before ICC, ICDR, LCIA, SCC, ICSID, SIAC, PCA, and ad hoc tribunals involving the valuation/calculation of damages for disputes in a variety of industries. She has been involved in numerous investor–state and commercial arbitrations and litigations involving oil and gas, power generation, financial institutions, metals and mining, agribusiness, real estate, and telecommunications.

Ms. Hardin has worked on engagements including:

- valuation and assessment of damages of/to subsidiaries, concessions, and joint ventures in the context of alleged expropriation, application of windfall profits or allegedly illegal taxation, and shareholder disputes across industries including oil and gas, energy, telecommunications, financial institutions, real estate, mining, transportation and logistics, and general manufacturing
- valuation of real estate assets including hotels, multi-use luxury resort and commercial properties, infrastructure projects, and industrial projects
- breach-of-contract matters and gas price reopeners relating to supply contracts for electric power, coal, and natural gas
- valuation of renewable energy plants including solar thermal, and photovoltaic (PV) plants, and assessment of impact of renewable energies on conventional electricity plants and the wholesale electricity markets
- valuation of investments in the form of complex and interrelated project-finance loans to entities in foreign countries that have been allegedly expropriated
- detailed analysis of destruction of value using bank-specific rate-setting tools of a large portfolio of project finance loans tied to projects whose guaranteed revenue stream was altered due to regulatory changes in investment country
- analyses of consequential damages related to the restructuring of complex cross-financing structures dependent on expropriated dividend-producing subsidiaries
- analysis of criminal allegations of embezzlement and money laundering

Ms. Hardin is fluent in Russian and has worked extensively on engagements involving entities or assets in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia; and in Latin and South America (including Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador), Europe, North Africa, and Asia.

Ms. Hardin is a frequent speaker on topics including damage theory, valuation (in particular valuation of energy assets), expert discovery, expert report writing, and other international arbitration-related topics. She has written articles on valuation and working with expert evidence, most recently coauthoring the chapter “Best Practices for Presenting Quantum Evidence” in Global Arbitration Review’s Guide to Evidence in International Arbitration: Edition 1 2023.