Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, announces its partnership in providing pro bono legal counsel to CARE Enterprises, a subsidiary of the international nongovernmental organization CARE USA, in its scaling of the CARE-SheTrades Impact Fund. Launched in 2019, the $75 million gender-justice fund will deploy capital to growth-stage companies in South and Southeast Asia that are creating gender-justice for their women employees, consumers and suppliers.
Dentons is assisting CARE Enterprises and Bamboo Capital Partners, founding fund partner and impact fund manager, to set up and manage a fund structure that supports US and global investments to economically empower women in the region. Dentons’ Luxembourg office is advising on the setup of the European-domiciled fund by providing their extensive expertise on impact fund structuring and new European regulations focused on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures. Dentons’ US team’s counsel is helping the CARE Enterprises and Bamboo teams navigate the complexity related to US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations. Dentons’ pro bono efforts are led by Dentons US chairman Jeff Haidet and partner Wendell Faria in the US and by partner Jean Luc Fisch and counsel Bruno Hrovat in Europe.
“We are humbled to be working in collaboration between our US and European regions toward the CARE-SheTrades Impact Fund’s goal of gender equality,” said Haidet. “Despite rapid economic growth in many parts of the world, women continue to fall behind their male counterparts when it comes to economic prosperity. The role that growth capital plays is a critical part of the strategy created to help alleviate global poverty through CARE’s mission.”
“CARE’s decision to partner with Dentons recognizes our competence in ESG matters, sustainable investing, financial regulatory and transactional matters, as well as our strong commitment to pro bono,” said Hrovat. “We are honored that we can advise CARE on all aspects of its CARE-SheTrades Impact Fund’s lifecycle.”
The fund was designed to tackle the root causes of gender discrimination by addressing the systemic barriers that keep billions of people from thriving. It focuses on not only reducing the significant effects of the current health and economic crisis on women and their families, but also in helping businesses rebound and grow as new models with equal pay, management representation for women, as well as ensuring goods and services are helping women consumers and their families build economic stability. As CARE’s first gender impact fund, the organization hopes to prove and then replicate the model through a series of gender funds where CARE has a local footprint in developing economies.
In addition to this Dentons partnership and the fund’s founding partners, CARE Enterprises and Bamboo Capital Partners, the fund is also partnering with the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, which will leverage its extensive SheTrades network to connect women entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses to markets around the world.
“We are grateful for our partnership with Dentons as they bring their global expertise to help us structure and scale this innovative investment approach to address gender equality and poverty,” said Ayesha Khanna, Managing Director of CARE Enterprises. “We are attracting public and private blended capital to invest in businesses that face barriers to access funding, and will work with them to economically empower women through new business models to ‘build back better’ as economies rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. We could not ask for a more committed and experienced legal partner in this important and challenging work.”
See article on Dentons website here.