Legal Mentions
Terms & conditions
1/ Legal terms
Publisher
The lauxera.com website (hereinafter “the Website”) is managed by Lauxera Capital Partners (hereinafter “Lauxera Capital Partners”), a French joint-stock company (société par actions simplifiées) registered with the Paris Register of Trade and Companies under number 881 260 657. Lauxera Capital Partners is authorised as a French société de gestion de portefeuille by the French Autorité des Marchés Financiers under number GP-20000005 since 13/02/2020 and under the AIFM Directive.
Address of the registered office: 41 avenue de Friedland, 75008, Paris, France
Copyright
The entire content of the Website is subject to copyright with all rights reserved. You may download or print out a hard copy of individual pages and/or sections of this Website provided you do not remove any copyright or other proprietary notices. Any downloading or other copying from this Website will not transfer title to any software or material to you. You may not reproduce (in whole or in part), transmit (by electronic means or otherwise), modify, link into or use for any public or commercial purpose all or any part of this Website without our prior written permission. Any unauthorised reproduction or use of the Website or the information presented therein, may be the subject of prosecution, particularly for infringement of copyright. Any rights not expressly granted in these terms are reserved.
Hosting : Go Daddy, 2155 E GoDaddy Way, 85284 Tempe, United States.
2/ Regulatory Policies
The following information are subject to specific procedures, duly established and maintained actively by Lauxera Capital Partners, and may be made available upon request:
- Our selection policy for financial intermediaries.
- Our policy for the prevention and management of conflicts of interest.
Policy for handling customer complaints:
Lauxera Capital Partners has designed and implemented a procedure to ensure the efficient, reasonable and timely processing of complaints that are filed by its clients: current, potential, and former.
In accordance with AMF Instruction no. 2012-07, any statement confirming a client’s dissatisfaction with a portfolio management company is deemed to constitute a complaint. A request for information, an opinion, clarification, a service or action, is not a complaint.
All complaints can be sent to the Investor Relations department at the following e-mail contact@lauxera.com or by letter to Lauxera Capital Partners, 41 avenue de Friedland, 75008, Paris, France
Lauxera undertakes to process complaints within ten working days from the date of receipt. If Lauxera is not in a position to process the complaint within this timeframe, it will acknowledge receipt within ten working days and process the complaint within a maximum of two months as from the date of receipt, barring special circumstances.
If the complaint is rejected or refused in whole or in part, the matter may be referred to the AMF Ombudsman. The AMF Ombudsman has authority over all disputes concerning a financial instrument, an investment service or, more generally, a matter that falls within the AMF’s scope of authority. This entity is the appropriate public ombudsman within the meaning of sub-paragraph 7 of Article L. 611-1 of the French Consumer Code, when disputes occur between a professional (portfolio management company) and a consumer, i.e., a natural person who is acting for purposes that do not fall within the scope of his/her commercial, industrial, independent or agricultural activity.
The client may refer a matter to the AMF Ombudsman:
- On the AMF website at: http://www.amf-france.org/Le-mediateur-de-l-AMF/Presentation.html?, where the mediation request form is available, and precise explanations concerning the Ombudsman’s role are provided;
- By sending a letter to the following address: Madame Marielle Cohen-Branche, Mediateur de l’AMF, 17 place de la Bourse, 75082 Paris Cedex 02, France.
Report on the exercise of voting rights:
Lauxera Capital Partners manages professional funds (SLP), the purpose of which is to invest primarily in unlisted financial instruments and, to a lesser extent, in financial instruments that are traded on a regulated or organised market. Further, Lauxera is a principal portfolio advisor to a listed OPCVM in France (FCP). The Firm’s voting policy is a core part of ensuring good governance practices at and exercising strong oversight over its portfolio companies.
In keeping with our role as active, consultative investors, Lauxera evaluates each matter put to Board vote for all of its investments. Where relevant, the Firm also considers the recommendations of leading proxy advisory services. For listed investments, Lauxera typically will vote by proxy or by mail except in cases when an in-person presence at a Shareholder’s Meeting allows the Firm to be more effective in its advocacy.
Lauxera highlights selected shareholder voting decisions — particularly those which differ from proxy advisory recommendations — in its shareholder engagement report.
3/ ESG Policy & Impact
Core belief
At Lauxera Capital Partners, the Team believes that a principles-based approach to evaluating Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) factors for 100% of investments enhances investment selection, portfolio risk management, and, ultimately, returns for Lauxera’s Limited Partners. As healthcare investors, Lauxera seeks to do well while doing good. As a rule (and not an exception), the Fund’s healthtech portfolio companies will focus on improving the quality and quantity of patients’ lives. They seek to scale medical innovations with the potential to improve healthcare outcomes globally. Lauxera’s capital and leadership enable the commercial success of these better and safer healthcare products, often in domains without acceptable alternatives.
Principles-Based Approach
ESG issues require careful evaluation on a company-level. Lauxera eschews broad-brush policies in favor of a case-by-case, principles-based approach to evaluating ESG factors for 100% of the investments that the Team assesses.
The Team’s key principles are:
- Environmental: a company’s business practices, supply chain, and go-to market structure should seek to minimize its carbon footprint and other ecological impacts
- Social: a company’s success depends on its ability to attract and retain top talent, which is only possible if the company maintains best-in-class labor practices and a positive public and industry reputation
- Governance: a company’s management team and its investors should have aligned financial incentives
Lauxera will not compromise these principles in our investments, but the Team will be flexible in evaluating ESG issues in light of their materiality and the specific facts. For example, Lauxera may invest in a medical device which dramatically reduces overall harm to patients but may introduce a small risk of a major side effect. The Team will consider the specific facts as well as the company’s ability to preserve the reputation of the therapy even in the case of a public disclosure of one of these major side effects. Lauxera’s core principle holds that no company will be able to sustainably attract and retain talent if it is not a net contributor to population health with a compelling clinical value proposition.
Integration into the Investment Process
The Lauxera Team analyzes ESG issues in detail for all pipeline and portfolio investments, assessing both opportunities and risks. Regarding opportunities, the Team expects to find some investments where an ESG issue contributes to a company’s sustainable growth or competitive moat. Regarding risks, the Team ensures that the projected return of each investment properly reflects all business risks, including risks related to ESG factors. Analysis of ESG factors can heavily influence the attractiveness of an investment, both in the assessment of a company’s sustainable growth rate, and in the minimum hurdle rate and terms that are acceptable. The Team believes that this integration of ESG analysis into the projected value of each portfolio opportunity is a simple and effective way to incorporate these issues into the Lauxera investment process.
Oversight, Reporting, and Ecosystem
Given the core role ESG plays in Lauxera’s mission, the Lauxera Team will monitor the implementation and execution of relevant and material ESG initiatives. The Team believes strongly that the success of growth-stage companies in this field is linked to their performance on ESG metrics, particularly Social practices around equal opportunity hiring, employee empowerment, product quality and safety, and data protection as well as Governance practices around management incentives, business ethics, and legal and regulatory risks. As part of portfolio company monitoring, the Team plans to implement tracking of key Environmental, Social, and Governance metrics when they are relevant and material. As examples, these efforts can include regular monitoring of product quality (through exception reports and regulatory databases), workforce and executive diversity, employee satisfaction (through Net Promoter Scores or similar instruments), employee turnover, and clinical and economic outcomes (such as amputations prevented and associated cost savings).
The Team provides transparency to clients on ESG-related issues. On an annual basis, Lauxera reports to Limited Partners and other stakeholders all relevant ESG factors that have been considered as part of investment decisions that resulted in a company being added to the Lauxera portfolio, and key ESG- related factors that the Team is tracking for all portfolio companies, noting the year’s successes and areas for improvement. Four times annually, the Team holds an ESG and Impact Committee meeting to review existing portfolio companies and policies and integrate new best practices. All members of the Investment Team participate in this Committee, which is chaired by Lauxera Co-Founder Alex Slack.
The Team wants to continue to support the ESG ecosystem that has increasingly pushed investors and companies to focus on these issues. To that end, the Team has become a signatory of the United Nations (“UN”) Principles for Responsible Investment. The Lauxera Team expects to continually evaluate new ways to further support the ESG ecosystem.
4/ Remuneration Policy Related to ESG and Sustainable Risks
Members of the management company and our advisors do not have compensation that is directly tied to achievement of objective ESG-, Impact-, and Sustainability-driven targets. However, in keeping with Lauxera’s ESG Policy, we believe that an investment’s performance in maximizing ESG-related opportunities (including promoting Sustainability) and addressing ESG-related risks is directly linked to the long-term financial performance of the business in question and to its return as an investment. Lauxera Capital Partners considers ESG and Sustainability-related risks for 100% of its potential investments, and clearly defines which risks are material and should be actively managed and ameliorated in the course of monitoring the company.
The performance of Lauxera’s portfolio companies against the company-specific, ESG-related goals laid out by the Team and Investment Committee are considered along with other criteria when setting remuneration targets for Team personnel.
5/ Conflict of Interest Policy
Objectives
To identify, prevent and manage conflicts of interest so they do not harm the interests of clients and shareholders
Key Points
- Conflict of interest is defined by having to choose between the interest of:
- The Management company and a client/shareholder
- Different clients
- The Management company and an employee
- Client and employee
- Shareholders of the Management Company and its clients
- Potential COI’s occur in the case where the ManCo is likely to (i) make a financial gain, (ii) have an interest different from the client’s, (iii) is encouraged to favor the interest of another client, (iv) have the same professional activity as the client or (v) receive an advantage from a person other than the client in relation to the service provided for the client
- Lauxera has implemented a COI procedure which is periodically reviewed by the RCCI and available to staff and clients on request
- Lauxera maintains a dedicated mapping that lists potential COI’s
- Lauxera also maintains a register of all actual COI’s encountered over the past 5 years
Operational Process
- The mapping of potential COI’s is reviewed at least once a year by the RCCI
- Any employee can raise a potential COI, and he/she must then notify the RCCI and specify (i) the service concerned, (ii) identification date, (iii) actual or potential nature of the COI, (iv) detailed description, (v) clients/shareholders impacted, (vi) type of impact
- When a COI is encountered:
- If the situation is listed in the mapping of potential COI, the procedure in place must be used to assess the risk and confirm the presence of the COI, actions may then be implemented and the register must be updated
- If the situation is not listed, specific management measures must be decided to confirm the presence of the COI and assess the risk, the situation must be added to the mapping by the RCCI, then actions may be implemented and the register must be updated by the RCCI
- The solution adopted to deal with a COI may include:
- Prohibiting or controlling exchange of information between persons concerned
- Separate supervision of persons concerned
- Removal of the remuneration linked to the activities concerned
- Limiting or prohibiting the inappropriate influence of the person concerned
- Control or prohibition the simultaneous or consecutive participation in several investments concerned
- If the measures are not sufficient, Lauxera must clearly inform the clients/shareholders of the nature, entities concerned, potential financial impacts, solutions implemented
6/ Exclusion Policy
The investment strategy of the Fund is to make Growth- and Growth Buyout-stage equity investments in revenue generating Healthtech companies.
The success of our investments in the Healthtech space are generally directly correlated with the value delivered by our investments to patients, providers, and to healthcare systems overall. Our goal for Lauxera investments is that each will contribute to achieving the “Triple Aim” in healthcare: better outcomes for patients, higher productivity for providers and innovators, and lower costs for the system.
The Management Company specifically excludes traditionally blacklisted industries like carbon-inefficient energy and industrial products, arms, and other “sin” industries (including tobacco and alcohol).
Additionally, we do exclude from our investment universe any specialty pharmaceutical company that cannot show demonstrable value creation for payors and for patients, in an effort to exclude companies in this sector which rely on higher pricing for limited innovation.
Last, the Management Company does not exclude but ensures the appropriate control of legal, regulatory and ethical issues linked to (i) human cloning for research or therapeutic purposes and/or (ii) genetically-modified organisms (GMO’s).
Relevant and material environment, social, and governance characteristics are considered in all stages of the Fund’s investment process, in respect to each individual investment opportunity.
7/ Key Service Providers Selection Policy
Objectives
To ensure that (i) provider selection is made in accordance to applicable regulations, (ii) Lauxera’s list of providers is updated, (iii) outsourced essential service providers are evaluated at least annually.
Key Points
- Management of Lauxera systematically reviews draft agreements with third parties and signs after completeness of the legal contract
- Members of the investment team are in charge of scanning and saving signed agreements on the drive (controlled by RCCI delegate during 2nd level controls)
- The depositary shall (i) have the ability to validate the returns of the assets held by funds managed by Lauxera, (ii) have the ability to monitor cash flows, (iii) have an independent governance and (iv) not have a conflict of interest vis-à-vis external fund investors
- Lauxera maintains a list of external service providers with the nature and perimeter of their function (see full procedure)
- Internal review of providers is performed regularly by the employees directly involved
Operational Process
- Contract management & monitoring
- Identification of a need and launch of negotiation by a Lauxera employee
- Legal and compliance analysis of the contract by legal/compliance services
- Contract signature by authorized parties
- Digital and legal archiving of the contract and integration into contract mapping by legal/compliance
- The Management company is in charge of choosing the depositary (RBC Investor & Treasury Services for Lauxera Growth I SLP)
- Outsourced essential services are compliance and internal control, administrative and accounting management and valuation, financial management, support, legal and marketing, and IT/BCP
- Lauxera remains fully responsible of these obligations
- Full review of providers is conducted at least annually (see full procedure)
- An ad hoc review will be conducted each time an event justifies it