![]() ![]() And last October, it won a bid to distribute electricity to 800,000 customers in southern Brazil. It took over the company that supplied electricity for Buenos Aires. It broke ground on a new power plant in Uruguaiana, near Brazil’s southern border. In short order, AES completed a string of deals: It signed a joint-venture agreement to buy CEMIG – an even-larger Brazilian utility, with more than 4 million customers. He moved to Rio de Janeiro and became one of Light’s four directors. Prieto, then 43, soon left for Paris to negotiate an agreement with EdF: “I said to myself, What the hell am I doing? I’m handling such a huge, huge job all alone.”īut Prieto got the job done. Light was a massive public utility with more than 11,000 employees and a sprawling distribution system that served more than 2.7 million retail customers in Rio de Janeiro. ![]() Why would AES be interested? His small company (which then had about 1,100 employees) was focused on the power-generation side of the business – building, buying, and operating plants, and selling the electricity from them to wholesale customers. The group saw AES as a potential partner. The French delegation – executives from Electricite de France (EdF), that country’s giant national utility – along with representatives of Houston Light & Power, was considering a bid on the soon-to-be-auctioned Light. Brazil’s government had launched a massive sale of public assets. ![]() The executives had gathered to discuss the privatization of Light Servicios de Electricidade (known as “Light”), one of Brazil’s largest public utilities. “I sat in the back and didn’t pay much attention,” he recalls. Could one of you show up?” Prieto raised his hand and walked to a conference room down the hall. “I’ve got fourteen people from France and some guys from Houston coming in to talk about buying a business in Rio de Janeiro,” Tribone announced. ![]()
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