Team size: Four

Can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently (cases, transactions, projects)?

Palmet Enerji celebrates its 38th years in 2022. While the company acquired the assets of Engie Türkiye in 2021, as the legal department of the company, we have assisted them with our energy, commercial and corporate law expertise for their M&A process. The M&A procedures were especially complicated since strict and detailed legal regulations were imposed by the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (“EMRA”) of Türkiye, and this required the whole team to perform their best expertise. In addition, our in-house legal team is providing litigation services to the whole Palmet group. We are key to the company’s business operation as the legal expertise that we have is extremely unique in Türkiye; having a legal expertise in energy sector is not common in Türkiye. Along with the external advisors, we demonstrated our commercial law and capital market experience during the issuance of Sukuks and green bonds.

Which recent political, economic, or regulatory changes have impacted the company and the team the most?

The global pandemic impacted on the price of transportation and energy including oil, natural gas and electricity; it hit the highest peak in history in terms of supply and price issues. Since Palmet Enerji is one of the major companies in the natural gas distribution and electricity production industry in Türkiye, we liaised with other major suppliers and regulatory bodies to maintain business continuity for gas and electricity supply. The pandemic and the relevant regulations implemented to protect business continuity caused the whole energy industry to suffer a sudden shock of wave and some companies had to cease their operation temporarily. The role of in-house legal was key to implement requests and claims made by the regulatory bodies, suppliers, or customers.

What do you think are the biggest risks facing your industry now and how are you preparing your company and team to face these risks?

With the increase of the energy prices, both suppliers and consumers have experienced difficulties to use energy during the pandemic. The government made an effort to subsidise natural gas prices to support their population. However, it is no longer enough to help small households and business owners. Large businesses are suffering even worse since the energy price for them has increased by 100 percent over the past year. Majority of business owners had to rely on force majeure clause to continue their business.