Latham & Watkins LLP advised Infraestructura Energética Nova, S.A.B. de C.V. (IEnova) in its Ps.7.4 billion (US$598 million) global initial public offering of common stock. The common stock, which was sold in a registered offering in Mexico and a private placement in the United States and outside Mexico, represented 18.9% of IEnova’s outstanding ownership interest, including overallotment options granted to the managers of the offering that were exercised in full.
IEnova is the first energy company to conduct a public offering in Mexico and list shares on the Mexican Stock Exchange. Since 1938, activities in the Mexican energy sector have been largely restricted to state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), one of the world’s ten largest oil and gas producers. In part due to sharp growth in energy demand, the Mexican government has permitted incrementally greater participation by private-sector energy companies over the last fifteen years, with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and the heads of the nation’s largest political parties entering into an agreement calling for greater liberalization of the industry in December 2012 and Mr. Peña Nieto obtaining approval of his fifteen-year energy reform plan from the Mexican Senate in March 2013.
Through its predecessors, IEnova entered the Mexican energy sector after changes to Mexican natural gas regulations in 1995. Its investments in Mexican energy infrastructure to date, which include natural gas pipelines and distribution utilities, a liquefied natural gas import terminal and a natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant, total more than US$2.4 billion, making it one of the largest private-sector energy companies in Mexico. IEnova is an affiliate of Sempra Energy, a US-based Fortune 500 energy services company that produced revenues of approximately US$10 billion in 2012.
The Latham & Watkins LLP team that advised IEnova on US law matters was led by partner Roderick Branch and counsel Michael Sullivan, with associates Matthew Grant and Max Kamer. The offering was the eighty-second oil and gas capital markets transaction in which Latham & Watkins acted as counsel over the last twelve months.
