GIIN Legal Practitioners Track Legal Convening

The GIIN’s Legal Practitioners Track European Convening was held in London between 1 – 2 June 2017 and saw about 80 legal practitioners gather to discuss the latest trends in impact investing.

The themes of this convening were numerous and included:

• Structuring permanent and long term capital impact investment vehicles
• Embedding effective impact metrics and incentives into agreements
• Cross-border transactions
• Lessons learned from failure: restructuring and workouts in impact investments
• Exiting investments: ensuring continuity and legacy.

A number of ESELA members were deeply involved in organising and contributing.

Alissa Pelatan, the Development Director of ESELA, presented an overview of impact investing and social enterprise in Europe, noting some of the key differences between the different European jurisdictions and noting some of the more interesting legal forms and legal instruments in use.

Aurelien Hollard, Of Counsel at Arendt & Medernach, presented a real life case study involving a distressed impact investment, Sung-Hyui Park, a Senior Associate at Bates Wells Braithwaite, chaired a panel on impactful exits and Luke Fletcher, Chair of ESELA, spoke in the closing session of the conference about ‘Moving towards 2030: where do we go from here?’ which addressed the opportunities and challenges facing the impact investment sector in the coming years.