Faced with major social and environmental challenges, the expectations of their stakeholders and developments in soft and hard law, companies and financial players are led to give increasing importance to social and environmental issues and the risks and opportunities they present for their business. Our ESG, CSR, Sustainable Development (Gide Impact) cross-practice team advises companies and financial players in the various areas of law affected by this development.
We help our clients to comply with CSR and ESG requirements and to limit the resulting risks, in a context of increasing litigations. Our support covers in particular corporate governance, non-financial reporting, compliance and due diligence duty. Where necessary, our compliance and litigation specialists, whether in civil or criminal law, represent them before authorities or courts.
We assist the most willing companies to go further in their positive contribution to society by helping them to reconcile profit with general interest, in particular by adopting a purpose ("raison d'être") or the status of mission-led company ("entreprise à mission"), or by creating shareholder foundations. We also advise them on the design and implementation of relevant profit-sharing or value-sharing mechanisms that promote the alignment of the interests of internal stakeholders (executives, employees, company founders or investment fund managers, etc.) or external stakeholders (customers, suppliers, tenants, etc.) with impact or non-financial performance objectives.
Lastly, as investors, encouraged by savers, public authorities and international institutions, increasingly direct their investments towards the most sustainable and best performing products, projects and companies in terms of impact or ESG rating, we act for lenders and issuers in the field of responsible finance, and in particular green finance, and for players in impact investing.
Gide Loyrette Nouel is a well-regarded environment law team acting for key public and private clients from the energy, mining and waste management industries. The law firm has standout experience in nuclear energy mandates, including regulatory issues relating to the storage of nuclear waste. The team is experienced in contentious permitting applications and civil claims flowing from soil and water pollution incidents. The clients benefit from the close collaboration with the firm's public law department. The practice offers additional expertise in environmental criminal law.
Chambers Europe 2022