About

Portuguese energy sector company REN – Redes Energéticas Nacionais, engages in the transmission of electricity and natural gas in Portugal through various subsidiaries. Supporting the activities, the legal team is made up of seven lawyers and three support staff and is led by head of legal and company secretary Marta Almeida Afonso, who has been praised by nominators for her experience as a lawyer in tier 1 law firms. According to nominators she ‘provides her strategy on all matters and she actively works together with the external lawyers as part of the team’. Another notable member of the team is Diogo Macedo Graça, the sub-director of the legal area. The team is relatively compact and it is divided into three main areas; company secretary, litigation and general assistance. In the last two years the team has moved from a traditional way of working, having been focused mainly on litigation, towards a market of a boutique law-firm type of team. The team now advises on M&A, listing of shares and capital markets work, regulations in the energy area and banking in addition to its traditional “bread and butter” legal work. The legal team has been involved in large M&A and capital markets transactions, namely the acquisition of a 42.5% stake Electrogas in Chile, owned by Enel Generación Chile – a project that required legal assistance in the bidding offers, the due diligence of the target and the negotiation of the acquisition agreements. The team was also central to the acquisition of EDP Gas in Portugal, the major company that operates the public natural gas distribution network in the coastal region of the north of Portugal, currently the second largest natural gas distributor in the country. ‘The team is used to sharing experiences and spreading knowledge, and there is a culture of informality in our day-to-day work. We celebrate the team’s success and also the individual success of each one in a collective way’, says Graça.