Ruth Knox is a partner in the London office of Kirkland & Ellis International LLP and a member of the Firm’s ESG & Impact Practice Group, which 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 (ESG) and climate-related regulatory requirements, investor demands, strategic opportunities, and voluntary reporting frameworks and coalitions.

Ruth’s practice focuses on counseling clients on the management, mitigation and maximization of ESG risks and opportunities respectively. She has spent almost a decade advising on ESG regulations and soft law standards, including the EU Sustainable Finance package, the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) standard. Her experience spans large-scale international M&A, sustainable finance transactions and ESG-related corporate crises of an international profile, and she has meaningful experience in climate finance.

Ruth advises across the full range of ESG legal services, including raising finance through sustainability-linked bonds, fund formations mandates, and corporate M&A transactions.

She has advised numerous funds on the application of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation to the categorization, strategy and operational risk and opportunity management programs of their alternative investment funds. As part of this work, she has helped establish a number of market-leading ESG-driven Article 9 funds. At her former law firm, she advised on numerous large-scale international corporate M&A transactions across various sectors including oil and gas, petchems, consumer products and mining. She also advised an international development institution on a market-leading forest bond.

Between 2017 to 2021, she led a major ESG regulatory compliance system review for a European-listed client 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.