Miguel Stilwell already has a new board for EDP

There will be a generational change in EDP’s executive management. Miguel Stilwell has chosen a shorter team than previously, with five members of the executive board of directors (EBD) — four of which were already directors and only one will be external to the company –. This is the proposal that EDP’s interim CEO has already presented to shareholders for the next term of office. ECO verified with sources that know the process.

When António Mexia announced that he would not be available for a new term of office at EDP, following the suspension from his duties in July due to the ‘excessive rents’ process, EDP shareholders invited Stilwell to present a new team. “The signatory shareholders have already asked Miguel Stilwell de Andrade, the interim chairman of the company’s executive board of directors, to submit to them a proposal on the composition of the PPA for the next term of office (2021-2023)”, referred in a statement sent to the CMVM. Stilwell has already made his proposal, to be voted at the extraordinary general meeting in January, and should be communicated to the market probably within the next 24 hours. The shareholders’ meeting – including the Chinese Three Gorges (21.55%), Oppidum of the Masaveu family (7.2%) and the BlackRock fund (5%) – will be scheduled 30 days later.

According to information gathered by ECO, besides Miguel Stilwell himself, the executive team will be composed of Rui Teixeira, Miguel Setas, Vera Pinto Pereira and a fifth member, a manager who will be hired within the universe of those listed on the PSI-20, with management experience, but whose name could not be confirmed. The changes are generational but at the same time reveal continuity. Altogether, the four members who remain in office accumulate 24 years of EDP board, and with experience in transversal areas of the company.

For the time being, the shareholders will only vote on the new CAE team, and just in March will there be changes in the General and Supervisory Board, led by Luís Amado, where representatives of shareholders and independent members sit. In addition, the changes in the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of EDP Renováveis, a company majority controlled by EDP and which also has at this moment an interim CEO, Rui Teixeira, after the suspension of João Manso Neto, are left for a second phase.

From the new team, three EDP’s historical members are leaving: António Martins da Costa, João Marques da Cruz and Helena Pereira. The executive committee was reduced to seven members after the suspension of Mexia and João Manso Neto’s terms. It will now be expanded to five members, also aligning with the governance practices followed by other companies in the sector with the dual management model (General and Supervisory Board and Executive Committee), such as REW and Eon.

The new executive management team will have to look again, and in advance, at EDP’s strategic plan, which was planned until 2022 but will come to a conclusion at the end of this year. Just this week, EDP and Macquarie Super Core Infrastructure Fund completed the 2.7 billion euro operation announced in July for the acquisition of the assets of the Spanish company Viesgo, which had already received final approval from the European Commission and the Spanish Council of Ministers. And days earlier, EDP Renováveis had completed the sale of wind assets in Spain to the Finerge group for 450 million euros.

EDP’s interim CEO, Miguel Stilwell, was officially contacted and did not make any comments.