M&A Associate

Vedi l’offerta su Go Lavoro: golavoro.it/annuncio-lavoro/7t3trc

Hybrid working model, with regular presence in Milan and close interaction with the Sky Distributed Energy team and our local platform businesses in Italy and Portugal.

The role will require regular travel, particularly within Italy and to Portugal, as well as occasional travel to other European markets.

Company Context

Sky Distributed Energy is a pan-European distributed energy business backed by Sky, a renewable energy fund managed by Octopus Energy Generation.

We develop, finance, own and operate decentralised energy assets across Europe, working through local operating platforms including Coralsun in Italy and SparkWave Energy in Portugal and Spain. Our activities span behind-the-meter solar, small-scale distributed generation, battery storage and other energy-transition solutions for commercial and industrial customers.

As the business grows, acquisitions of third-party projects and portfolios are becoming an increasingly important complement to our internally developed pipeline. These opportunities range from individual or portfolios of Ready-to-Build (“RtB”) projects through to operating renewable-energy assets, including behind-the-meter projects, Portuguese UPP portfolios and portfolios of Italian FER X projects.

To support this strategy, we are looking for a M&A; Associate – Southern Europe who can help originate, assess and execute these transactions alongside our local platforms and the wider Sky Distributed Energy investment team.

Role Purpose The M&A; Associate will be a core member of Sky Distributed Energy’s investment capability in Southern Europe, with an initial focus on Italy and Portugal.

The role will work closely with the Head of Investments and the management teams of Coralsun and SparkWave to execute acquisitions of renewable-energy projects and portfolios from initial screening through due diligence, investment approval, negotiation and closing.

This is a hands-on transaction role. The Associate will be expected to own the financial model and transaction analysis, coordinate due diligence workstreams, manage advisors and counterparties and help local platform teams navigate acquisition processes efficiently.

Given the distributed nature of the assets we acquire, an important part of the role will be applying institutional investment discipline pragmatically and proportionately. A portfolio of sub-1MW projects should receive robust diligence, but the process should not simply replicate the cost and complexity of acquiring a 500MW utility-scale project. The Associate will therefore help develop repeatable acquisition processes, identify the issues that genuinely drive value and risk, and focus internal and external resources accordingly.

The role should suit a highly analytical and commercially minded person who wants significant transaction responsibility early in their career and is excited by the opportunity to operate on the principal / buy-side within a fast-growing renewable-energy business.

Key Responsibilities

Transaction Execution

- Support and increasingly manage acquisition processes from initial assessment through signing and completion.
- Coordinate transactions involving RtB, construction-stage and operational distributed-energy assets, initially primarily in Italy and Portugal.
- Manage transaction timetables, information requests, data rooms, due diligence trackers, advisor workstreams and internal responsibilities.
- Act as a day-to-day point of coordination between Sky Distributed Energy,



Coralsun, SparkWave, sellers and external advisors.
- Identify key transaction issues early, escalate them appropriately and drive them towards resolution.
- Support negotiation of Heads of Terms, exclusivity arrangements and transaction documentation alongside internal and external legal counsel.
- Maintain clear visibility over open items, conditions precedent, approval requirements and closing deliverables.

Financial Modelling and Valuation

- Own and maintain financial models for project and portfolio acquisition opportunities.
- Translate technical, commercial, regulatory and contractual inputs into robust investment cases.
- Analyse project cash flows, investment consideration, development premium, operating performance, tax assumptions and expected investment returns.
- Perform valuation analysis for operating assets and RtB portfolios using appropriate methodologies.
- Run sensitivities and downside cases to identify key value drivers and investment risks.
- Review and challenge vendor models and assumptions rather than relying solely on third-party analysis.
- Ensure transaction models are transparent, well documented and capable of being efficiently updated throughout a transaction.
- Support the continued development of standard acquisition models and valuation tools across Sky Distributed Energy.

Due Diligence and Investment Risk

- Coordinate financial, commercial, legal, tax, technical, ESG and development due diligence, working closely with internal specialists and external advisors.
- Help define proportionate due diligence scopes based on transaction size, complexity, development status and risk.
- Work with Coralsun and SparkWave to ensure information provided by sellers is complete and transaction-ready.
- Critically review advisor findings and distinguish genuinely material investment risks from lower-value diligence observations.
- Translate due diligence findings into valuation adjustments, contractual protections, conditions precedent or other appropriate mitigants.
- Ensure key risks, assumptions and outstanding actions are clearly documented and understood before investment approval.
- Develop reusable DD checklists and transaction playbooks for recurring acquisition types such as UPP and FER X portfolios.

Investment Papers and Internal Approvals

- Prepare high-quality investment papers, transaction summaries and approval materials.
- Present financial analysis, valuation, sensitivities, transaction structure, key risks and due diligence conclusions clearly and concisely.
- Coordinate inputs from investment, platform management, development & construction, legal, tax, ESG, asset management and finance teams.
- Ensure investment materials focus decision-makers on the issues that matter rather than reproducing the entire due diligence exercise.
- Track approval conditions and ensure they are closed or appropriately reflected in transaction documentation.
- Support responses to questions from Sky Distributed Energy management, Boards and the Octopus Energy Generation investment team.





Transaction Structuring and Documentation

- Support the assessment of alternative transaction structures, including share purchases, asset purchases, project-right acquisitions, deferred consideration and milestone-based payments.
- Work with legal and tax advisors to understand the implications of transaction structures and identify commercially workable solutions.
- Review key commercial provisions in transaction documentation and ensure they are consistent with the financial model and investment case.
- Support negotiations around purchase price mechanisms, development milestones, warranties, indemnities, guarantees and completion conditions.
- Assist with transaction closing and subsequent handover of acquired projects to development, construction or asset-management teams.

Opportunity Assessment and Market Support

- Support screening and prioritisation of inbound acquisition opportunities.
- Prepare rapid initial assessments of portfolio quality, valuation and strategic fit to determine whether opportunities merit further work.
- Work with local platform management to identify attractive acquisition themes and counterparties.
- Support selected market mapping and origination exercises across Southern Europe.
- Build understanding of local renewable-energy frameworks and their impact on project economics, particularly in Italy, Portugal and Spain.

Technology, AI and Process Improvement

Sky Distributed Energy wants to use technology to execute a growing number of relatively granular transactions without creating a proportionately larger transaction team.

The M&A; Associate will therefore be expected to actively use and develop AI-enabled and data-driven transaction processes, including:

- automated extraction and comparison of information across large project portfolios;
- AI-assisted data-room review and document analysis;
- automated DD trackers and portfolio-level exception reporting;
- contract comparison and identification of non-standard provisions;
- rapid extraction of permitting, land, grid and commercial information;
- automation of repetitive modelling and investment-paper preparation tasks; and

The successful candidate will combine enthusiasm for new technology with strong judgement and appropriate quality control. AI should reduce low-value manual work and allow the team to spend more time on investment judgement rather than replace that judgement.

Required Experience

- 2–4 years of relevant professional experience.
- Strong transaction experience gained in investment banking / M&A; advisory, infrastructure or renewable-energy advisory, transaction services / corporate finance, an IPP or renewable-energy developer or M&A; / corporate law, for candidates demonstrating strong commercial and quantitative aptitude and a clear desire to move into principal investing.
- Strong financial analysis skills and, for finance/investment candidates, demonstrable financial modelling capability.
- Understanding of valuation, investment returns and transaction analysis.
- Experience working on due diligence and coordinating inputs from multiple workstreams.
- Ability to understand commercial and contractual documentation and identify the issues that materially affect an investment case.
- Strong Excel and PowerPoint skills.
- Fluent written and spoken English and either Italian/Portuguese (or ideally both).
- Degree in finance, economics, business, engineering, law or another relevant discipline.

Vedi l’offerta su Go Lavoro: golavoro.it/annuncio-lavoro/7t3trc