Buenos Aires, 9 May 2023. Today, Beccar Varela announced its revamped market-leading ESG* department, to continue to provide their clients with interdisciplinary legal advice on environmental, social, and corporate governance strategies. Partners María Fernanda Mierez and Manuel Frávega will lead the team.
The firm is deeply committed to collaborating in the strengthening of a more sustainable society, and their legal experts across all areas of law deliver integral ESG solutions to their clients, counseling on legal business structures for triple impact (including BCorps); due diligence for M&A and other transactions; environmental law and climate change; impact investments, including SGS bonds, carbon credits, microfinance, private social investments, and philanthropy; social license to operate (SLO); corporate governance; compliance & risk assessments; public law for national, provincial o municipal tenders; dispute resolution and litigation; value chains and sustainable purchasing protocols; business human rights and aligning ESG legal strategies with SDG objectives.
Managing partner Horacio E. Beccar Varela stated: “I am extremely proud to say that what we are presenting today is the most comprehensive service offering in Argentina for clients focused on each pillar of ESG. We have worked long and hard over several years to strengthen and consolidate our expertise across the entire spectrum, as well as to demonstrate that we walk the talk. I am confident that clients will appreciate the depth and breadth of what we offer.”
Fernanda Mierez, partner and co-head of the firm’s ESG and Company Law Departments, drilled down on the social and corporate governance aspects: “Social commitment and inclusion is part of our DNA. We are engaged in financial inclusion initiatives advising our major financial clients on impact investing and SGS bonds issuances, including delivering ground-breaking regulatory innovations such as allowing not-for-profits to participate in the national capital market. And of course, our understanding of corporate governance enables us to counsel clients on incorporating impact policies in their board regulations, as well as looking at our own practices and transparently reporting on our own progress through our own corporate sustainability reports.”
Manuel Frávega, partner and head of the Environmental Law & Climate Change Department and co-head of the ESG Department, highlighted the firm’s unique service offering: “In early 2022, Beccar Varela was the first firm in Argentina to specifically add climate change to its legal services, and we counsel clients on climate change risk and compliance in their operations and value chains. Our environmental due diligence embraces sustainable and green business practices, including related social issues such as community participation in environmental reviews. We are confident that this climate change innovation has served to complement and round out an integral ESG practice.”
As part of the firm’s continuous commitment to innovation and ESG, Beccar Varela was Argentina’s first full-service law firm to join the United Nations Global Compact and to issue a Corporate Sustainability report, still the country’s only firm to do so in both regards. It also launched the first formal Public Affairs Department in 2022, the same year in which it celebrated its 125th anniversary.
* Acronym for Environmental, Social, and Governance.