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Philippa Rafferty - associate

“I started on the EDF deal in my fourth and final trainee seat. It was good to be able to stay with the deal from a trainee through to being a NQ, and get to understand how the issues that I’d first looked at when working on the deal played out at different stages of the sale process.”
Philippa Rafferty - associate
High-profile and complex

High-profile and complex

Client: Electricite de France (EDF)
Lead practice area: Corporate
Value: £5.8 billion

The high-profile and complex nature of this deal, with a combination of legal, geopolitical and economic obstacles to overcome, highlights the strengths of our corporate and global energy practices.

EDF instructed a multi-disciplinary team at Herbert Smith to advise on the sale of its £5.8 billion electricity distribution business in the UK to its preferred bidder, Hong Kong-based Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings Limited/ Hongkong Electric Holdings Limited consortium.

The purpose of the sale was to raise funds to reduce EDF’s debt and enable increased investment in new nuclear business in the UK.
Comprising three UK regional networks, with a distribution area that covered London, south-east England and east of England and serving approximately 7.8 million customers, EDF’s assets represented the country’s largest electricity distributor.

The transaction began in April 2009 and took over 12 months to complete. Our work was led by corporate and energy teams from our London, Paris and Brussels offices. They were supported by our real estate, employment, pensions, regulatory, finance, dispute resolution, tax, intellectual property and information technology practices.

A part of that solution was to undertake one of the firm’s largest vendor due diligence exercises, with contributions from over 180 fee earners and the creation of a comprehensive virtual data room which supported EDF management’s success story by driving the bid price up.

The sale of EDF’s UK electricity distribution assets was highlighted by The Guardian as “one of the biggest deals in Europe by a north Asian company”.