Comillas ICADE and Gómez-Acebo & Pombo join forces to promote sustainability in the legal field

The Gómez-Acebo & Pombo-ICADE Chair on Sustainability: Law and Legal Practice at the Faculty of Law (Comillas ICADE) held its official presentation ceremony with a round table discussion between Íñigo Olaizola Arguiarro, Head of ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) Information Planning, Analysis and Reporting at Iberdrola, and Reyes Palá Laguna, lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Zaragoza and member of the Academic Council of Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, who analysed the differences between the ESG situation in Europe and the United States.

The vice-rector for Research and Teaching Staff, Mariano Ventosa, was in charge of welcoming the attendees. "Today we celebrate the launch of this new chair, which is great news. In recent years there has been an important boost to the creation of new chairs, especially from the Faculty of Law," he said. "The university has several missions, including training, research and the transfer of value to society. A chair helps us, above all, in the latter two. They are areas of contact between the university and companies, in this case the law firm Gómez-Acebo & Pombo. These areas of contact allow us to better understand what society needs", he concluded.

Carlos Rueda Gómez-Calcerrada, senior partner at Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, then took the floor. "This event is very important for us. Gómez-Acebo & Pombo is and has been a law firm that is very committed to all sustainability issues, so the content of the Chair was a perfect fit for us. Sustainability is in our DNA," he said. "The topic of sustainability is enormously broad and demanding."

In addition to the aforementioned speakers, the two co-directors of the Chair, Ana Martínez Pina, partner of Banking and Finance and coordinator of Financial Regulatory and Insurance at Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, and Cecilio Molina Hernández, lecturer in Commercial Law at Comillas ICADE, were also present at the table.

A commitment to legal sustainability

The Chair in Sustainability and Law will focus on the study, research and debate, from a legal perspective, on the role of companies in the transition towards a more responsible economic and social model, incorporating environmental and social factors, human rights and governance, with emphasis on the regulations approved for this transition.

This chair aims to open a line of research on the role of law in the change of economic and social model that is taking place today. In addition, it will analyse and monitor European and national regulations on sustainability, as well as international trends in this field in order to respond to the implications of these new regulations for companies in different sectors. The final objective will be the development of agile and efficient legal solutions so that companies can easily adapt to these changes with a broad knowledge of the situation and the outlook in all the areas in which they operate.