What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

In my 10 years at Cobra IS, I was involved in different phases of the expansion of the group in Brazil, which started with the creation of a robust corporate structure to receive and develop the group’s projects in Brazil, capable of managing from the simplest to the most complex contractual dynamics, such as financing, M&A and EPC.

We consolidated our leadership in the electricity area, with the development of more than 12 transmission line concessions, through the management of our own public concessions or for third parties, dealing with the most complex EPC/O&M contracts, financing involving more than US$5bn, as well as M&A operations for the purchase and/or sale of these projects with our partners in Brazil.

Additionally, Brazil has become a major focus of the group’s energy area, especially with photovoltaic energy, through the development or purchase of 25 projects across the country, totalling, so far, more than 3,000MW and US$3bn of investment. Also, we are finishing the construction of the first project to generate energy using pre-salt gas with 565MW of installed capacity and almost US$1bn in investment.

Finally, through Petrobras’ divestment projects, we brought the group’s O&G area to Brazil, through the purchase of the Carmopolis Complex, located in the State of Sergipe, which has 11 onshore concessions, hundreds of kilometres of gas pipelines, oil pipelines, transmission lines and the Tercarmo port terminal, with an investment of US$1.1bn, this being the largest onshore O&G complex in South America.

Did the pandemic lead to a lasting increase in the interaction your legal team has with the strategic plans of the company?

During the initial moments of the pandemic, we observed a growing demand from internal clients who, by not finding practical solutions for the development of their activities and their contracts, sought punctual legal advice. With the extension of the pandemic, what was once punctual, ended up becoming recurrent due to the need to design and monitor a strategy, in real-time, to minimise the impacts in the then fragile balance of contractual and legal obligations, administrative and judicial decisions, in the economic-financial impact expected for the projects.

The result of this equation was a direct change in the management of the legal department, with an increase in the trust of the internal client, which resulted in the need to invest in professionals and hire internal legal specialists, as well as an indirect result that was the need to create an integration of the expectations of this growing team.