Ruth Knox is a partner in the Corporate Department and chair of the ESG & Sustainable Finance practice at Paul Hastings and is based in the firm’s London office. Ruth advises some of the world’s most sophisticated private equity firms, corporations and project sponsors and lenders on complex and evolving legal issues relating to environmental, social and governance and climate-related regulatory requirements, investor demands, strategic opportunities (including transition strategies) and voluntary reporting frameworks and coalitions. She is an environment and climate change legal authority.
Ruth’s practice focuses on counseling clients on the management, mitigation and maximization of ESG risks and opportunities, respectively. She has spent more than a decade advising on ESG regulations and soft law standards, including the EU Sustainable Finance package, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) standard. She provides commercial, solutions-oriented advice in sustainable fund formation, large scale international M&A, sustainable finance transactions and ESG-related corporate crises of an international profile, and she has meaningful experience in climate and nature-based finance. In her career, she has also advised on a wide range of product regulatory regimes across different sectors, and the UK contaminated land regime.
Ruth has advised hundreds of fund managers on the application of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and EU Taxonomy Regulation including product designation, investment strategy and operational implementation of bespoke ESG risk, impact and opportunity management programs deployed through their alternative investment funds. As part of this work, she has helped establish a number of market-leading ESG-driven Article 9 funds. At a prior law firm, Ruth advised on numerous large-scale international corporate M&A transactions across various sectors including oil and gas, petrochemicals, consumer products and mining. She also advised an international development institution on a market-leading forest bond.
Between 2017 to 2021, Ruth led a major ESG regulatory compliance system review for a European-listed client following a major crisis and related public inquiry involving advice on technical ESG regulatory standards, management, and coordination of various technical stakeholders and strategic advice to senior management in respect of various ESG regulatory issues.
Ruth’s representative clients include TPG, G42, Affinius Capital, Norwegian Cruise Lines, TowerBrook Capital Partners, Arcmont, Kartesia and Nuveen.