About

Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN) owns two of Portugal’s main energy infrastructure networks – the National Electricity Transmission Grid (RNT) and the National Natural Gas Transportation Grid (RNTGN) – and is responsible for the planning, construction, operation, maintenance and global technical management for both grids and their associated infrastructures. The REN legal team – led by Marta Almeida Afonso in her role as head of legal and company secretary – play a pivotal part in a huge amount of regulatory work and M&A transaction assistance, as well as the business-as-usual legal and compliance matters that allow the company to operate. The ability to take on more work is in part owing to recent restructure of the team. Afonso explains that the team changed from a ‘very traditional’ legal function, which was mainly focused on litigation work, to being a ‘boutique law-firm type team’ that has expanded its range of support to advising on ‘M&A, listing of shares and capital markets work, regulatory in the energy area and banking, in addition to the more traditional subjects’. Busy with a wide-range of issues, Afonso can point to several significant transactions the team has recently been involved in including binding processes for acquisitions, litigation with Portuguese Tax Authorities and listing shares that belonged to the two main shareholders of the company. The team was critical to a recent key deal – the acquisition of a stake in Electrogas, which owns a key gas pipeline in Chile – where Afonso describes the team as being ‘a key element for the swift conclusion of this process, conducting the final negotiations in Chile on behalf of the executive committee’. Utilising an approach that engenders knowledge-sharing to accentuate the best of everyone’s individual experience and abilities, Afonso explains how the team’s culture is based on collective wisdom, implemented through the use of weekly meetings to share experiences involving short presentations on relevant topics. The breadth and depth of knowledge within the team is improved through the range of individual team members’ backgrounds; Afonso cites the experience of the team as being ‘very different – in terms of years of experience, past practises and curricula’. Within the team of eight, noted for their outstanding contributions to the department are Diogo Graça, Ana de Brée and Anabela Moreira, each of whom are praised by Afonso as ‘providing excellent service to the internal client’, in addition to bringing specialised skills from a mixture of experience in law firms and other areas of the group.