Covington Advises ENGIE on the Acquisition of Portugal’s Second Largest Hydroelectric Portfolio

Covington Advises ENGIE on the Acquisition of Portugal’s Second Largest Hydroelectric Portfolio

December 21, 2020

LONDON—ENGIE, together with its consortium partners Crédit Agricole Assurances and Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, completed the acquisition of Portugal’s second largest hydroelectric portfolio, for an enterprise value and consideration of EUR 2.2 billion. Covington advised the consortium on the financing of the transaction.

The hydroelectric portfolio has a generation capacity of 1.7 GW, and includes three newly commissioned pump storage units along with three recently repowered run-of-river plants. ENGIE, as the industrial partner for the consortium, will operate and maintain the hydroelectric portfolio and also provide energy management services.

The acquisition of the hydroelectric portfolio is instrumental to the deployment of ENGIE’s zero-carbon strategy, bringing flexible renewable capacity which complements ENGIE’s existing Iberian portfolio of onshore wind (1.1 GW) and solar (50 MW) power, most of which is already in partnership with Mirova.

The Covington team was led by Julie Scotto, and included Agnieszka Klich, Chloë Taylor, and Matthew Foster.