At the beginning of the year, the energy provider STEAG with its approximately 5,700 employees completed the legal and operational separation of the group into a “black" coal division and a “green" growth division.
Intensive preparations for the comprehensive transformation of the entire STEAG Group were launched at the end of 2021. These included bundling the coal business in STEAG Power GmbH and its subsidiaries. The business units responsible for the generation of renewable energies and related services were brought together under Iqony GmbH, which functions as a separate “green" subgroup represented by the new “Iqony" brand. STEAG Power GmbH and Iqony GmbH are both wholly-owned subsidiaries of STEAG GmbH. In turn, STEAG GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kommunale Beteiligungsgesellschaft GmbH & Co. KG (KSBG), in which six municipal utilities from the regional state of North Rhine-Westphalia have pooled their STEAG shares.
In 2022, the transformation of the STEAG Group was agreed with the financiers involved as part of an amendment to the restructuring agreement. This will ensure compliance with ESG criteria and clearly show that the Group intends to phase out CO2 emissions by ending coal-fired power generation in the foreseeable future. Moreover, the transformation is a prerequisite for the intended sale of STEAG, which is to be completed in 2023.
As lead counsel, Gleiss Lutz has advised STEAG and KSBG comprehensively on the transformation, in particular on the negotiation of the necessary agreements with the financiers involved, the development and implementation of a restructuring plan, all corporate law measures for the implementation of the transformation and the preparation of the sale process. Gleiss Lutz will also assist STEAG and KSBG with the sale process itself, which will start in the first quarter of 2023.
The following Gleiss Lutz team acted for STEAG and KSBG under the overall leadership of Dr. Andreas Spahlinger as well as Dr. Helge Kortz (lead, Finance), Martin Hitzer (lead, Corporate), Dr. Alexander Schwarz and Dr. Andreas Löhdefink (joint lead, M&A):
Restructuring: Dr. Andreas Spahlinger (partner), Dr. Matthias Tresselt (partner, both Stuttgart), Dr. Alexander Nagel (counsel, Düsseldorf)
Finance: Dr. Helge Kortz (partner), Dr. Kai Arne Birke (partner), Dr. Andreas Kohlheim (counsel), Dr. Thomas Kulzer (counsel), Jana Pinto Escaleira (all Frankfurt)
Corporate: Martin Hitzer (partner), Dr. Joscha Meyer, Katharina Bein, Sebastian Dietz, Dr. Charlotte Evers, Dr. Marc Telle (all Düsseldorf)
M&A: Dr. Alexander Schwarz (partner, Düsseldorf), Dr. Andreas Löhdefink (partner, Frankfurt), Dr. Johann Wagner (partner, Tax, Hamburg), Wolfgang Sturm (of counsel, Düsseldorf/Hamburg), Philipp Jaspers, Kevin Löffler (both Frankfurt), Kai Zimutta (Düsseldorf)
Public Law: Dr. Marc Ruttloff (partner), Dr. Lisa Kappler (both Stuttgart), Dr. Lars Kindler (Düsseldorf), Tobias Burchert (Stuttgart), Matthias Hahn, Vivien Etzkorn (both Düsseldorf), Linda Rampf, Frederic Schuster (both Stuttgart)
State Aid: Dr. Ulrich Soltész (partner), Dr. Harald Weiß (counsel), Dr. Christina Wolf, Mathis Schaller (all Brussels)
Other: Dr. Tim Weber (partner), Konrad Discher (counsel, both Real Estate, Frankfurt), Dr. Christian Hamann (partner, Berlin), Dr. Manuel Klar (Munich, both Data Protection), Dr. Simon Wagner (counsel), Sophie Römer, Till Meier (all Commercial, Stuttgart)
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