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

Focus Energia was a publicly held company, listed in the Novo Mercado segment of B3, which was merged into a subsidiary of Eneva, and subsequently merged into Eneva. The total value of the transaction was R$965m at a price of R$14.83 per share (market closing of Dec 10, 2021) and Focus Energia’s shareholders received a total amount of R$715m and 17m new shares of Eneva. The transaction created synergies from the gain of scale and the asset transactions between the parties, the creation of a new resource with a wide portfolio that is more balanced between the regulated and free markets involved in energy trading, and with supplementary competences to develop, implement and profit with the projects. The transaction will also create a safer generation of cash flow with less capital cost with the combination of supplementary sources of energy generation.

The acquisition of CGTF – Centraral Geradora Termelétrica Fortaleza, owner of the UTE Fortaleza, a gas-fired thermoelectric plant, implemented under the federal government’s Priority Thermoelectricity Program (PPT), with an installed capacity of 327MW, located in the City of Caucaia, was concluded on August 23, 2022, upon payment of the BRL489m, to Enel Brasil.

The acquisition of CELSEPAR – Centrais Elétricas do Sergipe Participações, holder of 100% of the shares of CELSE – Centrais Elétricas do Sergipe, which has as main operational asset the UTE Porto de Sergipe I, a combined cycle natural gas thermoelectric power plant, with an installed capacity of 1,593MW, located in Barra dos Coqueiros, was concluded on October 3, 2022, upon payment of BRL6.7bn to New Fortress Energy and the shareholders of Ebrasil Energia. UTE Porto do Sergipe I is now fully contracted in the regulated market until December 2044, being entitled to an annual fixed revenue of R$1.9bn (as of November 2021), indexed to the IPCA inflation index, in addition to variable revenues equivalent to R$406.2/MWh (as of June 2022), indexed to Brent crude oil prices, as per the terms of the gas supply agreement.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

We have been searching for the best practices and software in the legal market, in order to improve performance and optimise our more time-consuming activities, to allow our team to focus on critical and strategic subjects. We are currently implementing software and digital platforms focused on (i) automatisation of legal documents (power of attorneys, simple contracts as NDAs and amendments); (ii) the tracking and planning of tasks in a single platform, which would allow us to access the metrics of each of the team components and the time spent in each project; and (iii) storage and follow up on lawsuit data.