Project Finance International (PFI) Magazine recognised the acquisition of Brisa as Europe M&A Deal of the Year in its PFI Awards 2020, confirming the acquisition of the major Portuguese toll-road operator as a Top 10 deal in Europe.
Morais Leitão advised, together with Freshfields and Latham and Watkins, the consortium of buyers APG Asset Management N.V., the National Pension Service of the Republic of Korea and Swiss Life Asset Managers on the purchase from the José de Mello Group and the Arcus European Infrastructure Fund 1 LP, managed by Arcus European Investment Manager LLP, of two shareholder blocks representing a total of 81.1% of Brisa's voting right.
This deal is one of the largest foreign investments in Portugal in recent years, taking place in a very competitive bidding process with several interested investors. The fact that it was formalized and announced in the current economic context, of strong uncertainty, is particularly relevant.
For Tomás Vaz Pinto, leading partner of the M&A department at Morais Leitão, “this was a long and complex process, with three buyers from different jurisdictions requiring a great deal of coordination from our teams. In addition, the complicated period we lived with COVID-19 required an extra effort so that everything went according to the expected parameters”.
The Morais Leitão team included Tomás Vaz Pinto, Diana Ribeiro Duarte, Rute Carvalho da Silva and Lourenço Limão Oliveira (Corporate M&A), Margarida Olazabal Cabral (Public Law), Filipe Lowndes Marques, Filipa Morais Alçada and Duarte Veríssimo Reis (Banking and Finance), and Luís do Nascimento Ferreira, Pedro Gouveia e Melo and Dzhamil Oda (Competition).
