Sustainable Development
AGF Private Equity has chosen to place the issue of Socially Responsible Investment at the heart of its investment process.
Taking the concepts of SRI into account when selecting investments or private equity funds has become a necessity, making it possible to anticipate the regulatory constraints under which companies will be obliged to operate in the future.
It is our responsibility as an investor to ensure that the directors of the companies we finance have fully integrated the logic of sustainable development into their management techniques and that they know the answers to the questions raised by SRI.
AGF Private Equity has incorporated these considerations into the way it runs both of its activities, i.e. funds of funds and venture capital.
For the funds of funds activity, we have opted to integrate the concepts of SRI into the investment process by sending out a questionnaire during the due diligence phase of all investment opportunities. Our concern is to find out whether, and how, the selected investment funds take the issues of SRI into consideration.
With regard to venture capital, AGF Private Equity always asks the directors of the companies in its portfolio about their environmental, social and ethical policies. This approach enables the management team to make sure that the companies respect good practice in sustainable development and that the management has identified and implemented suitable measures to control the risks associated with the company's activity.
AGF Private Equity is convinced that private equity, which is an ever-increasing component of company funding, will come to play a determining role in the development of SRI practices in the next few years. By integrating these elements into its management processes now, AGF Private Equity hopes to play a leading part in disseminating them, and to take up a position from which, where appropriate, it can develop investment processes that include them in an even more dynamic way. The aim of this approach is to develop expertise and experience that will make it possible to offer investments that take SRI considerations into account while maintaining a high level of performance.
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