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Portrait ofPietro Cavasola

Pietro Cavasola

Managing Partner

CMS Adonnino Ascoli & Cavasola Scamoni
Via A. Depretis 86
00184 Rome
Italy
Languages German, French, English, Italian

 

Pietro Cavasola is the head of the Corporate M&A Department and a member of the Energy group. He is also a member of the CMS Executive Committee.

He has a long-standing international experience, and his clients include several important national and multinational companies operating in various industries.

He sits in the boards of directors/auditors of several major Italian and international companies and has been repeatedly designated by the Bank of Italy in the supervisory committees of banks in extraordinary administration.

Pietro’s areas of specialization include Corporate law, Mergers & Acquisitions, Joint Ventures, Commercial Contracts, Administrative law and Regulatory matters. He also has experience in important commercial litigations. His experience includes working for major multinational companies operating in the oil and gas, energy, publishing, pharmaceutical, construction, environmental waste management and banking industry sectors, that he has assisted on major M&A transactional and regulatory matters with respect to their acquisitions or divestments in Italy.

Pietro is recommended in the corporate sector by some of the most important legal directories such as Chambers and Partners and Legal 500. In 2018, 2019 and 2020 Pietro was nominated as an Acritas Star and he won the “Oil & Gas Lawyer of the Year” in 2020.

In addition to Italian, Pietro speaks English and French fluently and has a good command of the German language.

 

 

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Education

  • 1994 – Admitted to the list of Certified Auditors
  • 1983 – Admitted to the Italian Bar
  • 1987 – Authorized to act before the Higher Courts (Supreme Court and Council of State)
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Feed

07/03/2024
Renewable energy in Italy
1. Introduction  With the aim of preventing climate change, the European Union (“EU”) has set ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The EUs main goals are to achieve climate neutrality...
01/01/2024
Energy M&A
The M&A activity related to Energy plants and investments has strongly increased in the last years by undergoing significant transformation in the energy industry driven by technological advancements...
24/10/2023
CMS European Energy Sector M&A and Investment Outlook 2024
As the world economy increasingly embraces the push towards decarbonisation, Europe has actively sought to place itself at the vanguard of the discussion on energy trans­ition. Op­por­tun­it­ies to deploy capital abound as power sources switch further towards offshore and onshore wind, solar, heat, hydrogen, battery storage, new networks, carbon capture, and industrial decarbonisation. The latter brings an interface with other sectors such as technology companies (with power hungry data centres a particular focus), real estate, low carbon transport and decarbonisation of industrial processes such as cement, glass and steel production. As much as it is difficult, complex and highly political, the energy transition is also a huge business opportunity. To reach net zero by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global investment in clean energy alone will need to increase from the USD390bn in the first half of 2023, to USD 1.3tn in 2030. Many commentators worried that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would put back the transition and shift Europe back towards fossil fuels. While it appears to have resulted in a renewed political focus on energy security it has also laid bare the financial and political consequences of relying on oil & gas imports, giving further impetus to renewables as a secure form of energy. Europe has also sought to be a leading light on the concept of “reaching net zero”, with the European Union (EU) having set out its ambition, back in 2019, to become the world’s first major economic bloc to be climate-neutral by 2050. This has added momentum to energy investment and M&A over recent years – 2021 and 2022 saw the second and third highest annual aggregate values of Western European M&A in the sector on record, at USD 59.8bn and USD 53.7bn, respectively, bested only by the anomalously high total of USD 89.4bn logged in 2018. Energy M&A in the region has been more subdued in 2023, but our survey demonstrates that energy executives are gearing up for a more active dealmaking period, with most expecting more opportunities and anticipating increased levels of investment in the year ahead. Capital looks set to continue to flow primarily to renewable energy projects and related assets, with solar and batteries topping the list of attractive subsectors among our respondents. Consistent with this, South West Europe takes pole position as the most promising region for investment opportunities. But there are thorns among the roses. Our respondents are cognizant of the challenges in the energy market, with supply-chain volatility and commodity price increases emerging as a prominent concern. This is unsurprising after a period of dislocation following the pandemic and amid a time of rising global demand for renewable products and commodities. Persistent inflation and elevated interest rates, combined with an uncertain macroeconomic outlook, are raising investors’ concerns, with financing risk (including the increased cost of financing) also coming to the fore for respondents. Overall, while some sense a recent softening of the market due to these fundamentals, our survey paints a picture of steadily improving investor sentiment in Europe’s energy sector, laying the foundations for a busier period ahead for M&A activity.
12/09/2022
CMS Public Procurement Contact Card
World-class public procurement specialists The quality of public services is increasingly determined by world-class skills in public procurement. The procurement regime applies not only to the public...
26/08/2022
Public procurement regulation in Italy
October 2018 As a preliminary remark, please note that the public procurement system in Italy is regulated by:The Code of Public Contracts (Legislative decree n. 50/2016) – hereinafter the “Code”;ANAC...
27/07/2022
Energy storage trends - Spotlight on Italy
Energy storage systems play a crucial role in Italy’s decarbonisation and energy security. On 21 January 2020, the Ministry of Economic Development published the Integrated National Energy and Climate...
31/01/2022
Time for transition: Energy M&A 2022
While world leaders have been gathering for COP meetings for decades, what made COP26 perhaps particularly notable is that the private sector also gathered in force, and with a commitment and determination to be a key driver in the decarbonisation of the world’s economies.  In previous years, there have been murmurings from various corporates that to make social or environmentally driven investment decisions may not align with their fiduciary duty to act in the interests of shareholders. As shareholder activism has driven the debate into boardrooms from above, this attitude is rapidly reversing direction. While returns are generally seen as lower in the clean sector compared to, say, the oil & gas sector, being invested in the green transition is increasingly seen as a key route to preserving and protecting shareholder value. At the same time, voluntary and mandatory climate related disclosures are aligning the drivers for investors across the board so that capital is increasingly driven by the metrics they produce.  This is being reflected in, among other things, the plummeting cost of capital for green investments. At the same time high carbon intensive investments, such as coal based projects and businesses, are struggling to secure funding, with many facing in­solv­ency. In­vest­ments in the energy transition, a key part of the green transition, will principally take the form of M&A. The outcome of COP26 and the momentum it has generated means that European dealmakers in the energy sector will be even busier in 2022. Europe leads the world in the energy transition and the race to net zero is driving near-record levels of dealmaking – notably in wind and solar photovoltaic generation. At the same time, the energy transition is both expanding and fragmenting the energy sector. For many, it has traditionally been focused on energy generation. The transition is bringing to the fore less visible technologies. Everything from traditional hydropower to grid-scale batteries, electrification of transport and hydrogen. It is also bringing into the mix sectors that have not traditionally been focused on energy, such as industrial decarbonisation, shipping and mining for the natural resources needed for the energy transition. In parallel with this, there is a huge and growing story around energy transmission and distribution. Electricity networks will need to expand massively to facilitate electrification and new technologies. They are also becoming smarter with the use of digital technology to optimise the way power is distributed, traded and consumed. Further, new types of networks may provide investment opportunities for those looking for stable long term assets, such as hydrogen and carbon networks. Against this background, traditional fossil fuel-based players are decarbonising their operations. For the oil and gas majors, this means acquiring or significantly enhancing their capabilities in renewables, including wind, solar and hydrogen, while simultaneously divesting selected carbon-intensive assets in response to mounting ESG pressures. This may be one of the reasons why 50% of respondents in our study point to distress-driven deals as a top sell-side driver. Change is endemic in the energy sector, but the current transition makes the years since liberalisation of energy markets in the late 1980s seem almost steady-state in comparison. Despite the momentum and push for capital to be invested in the energy transition, there remain obstacles, not least the limited pipeline of good quality investment opportunities, continuing concerns over lockdowns and COVID-19 variants, financing difficulties arising from potentially unstable long term revenue streams and diminishing rates of return. Notwithstanding these challenges, our study finds that energy sector M&A will increasingly be an engine driving capital into propositions that match social and political ambitions for the green transition. Key findings  Energy remains a premium asset class for most institutional investors, with its performance during the pandemic and impetus from COP26 further enhancing its at­tract­ive­ness75% of energy companies are considering an acquisition and/or divestment in 2022Alongside premium assets, in some subsectors there are undervalued targets driving buy-side activity, with sellers shedding distressed assets as the sector shifts in response to the energy transition45% think COVID-19 will be a major M&A obstacle in 2022, but this remains a fluid situation that can change rapidly
31/01/2022
Time for transition: Energy M&A 2022. Dealmaking in the age of COVID, digital...
2021 was a stellar year for European energy M&A – the highest on record since at least 2006 – with power, renewables and electricity networks the number-one deal generator. And this strong activity...
16/12/2021
Legal guide for company directors and CEOs in Italy
ESG obligation for Directors and CEOs 1. Do existing directors’ duties contain obligations that apply to matters that could be categorised as an ESG consideration, e.g. the environment, employee welfare? ...
10/03/2021
Gas Regulation 2021
Our ReportDomestic sector overviewState of the mar­ket­Con­sump­tion­Gov­ern­ment policyRegulatory au­thor­it­ies­Reg­u­la­tion of natural gas pro­duc­tionOwn­er­ship and or­gan­isa­tion­Reg­u­lat­ory frame­workUn­con­ven­tion­al...
09/06/2020
Impact of COVID-19 on European M&A activity
The CMS Corporate/M&A Group teamed up with investment bank Credit Suisse to analyse the financial and legal implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on M&A transactions in Western Europe
10/04/2020
Impact of COVID-19 on Public Procurement
The COVID-19 crisis is having a serious impact on the economy and businesses. In these circumstances, public procurement can be of even greater importance than usual and various questions arise, such...