A new shareholder foundation

See you in La Rochelle, in Charente-Maritime. This is where Léa Nature, the giant of organic and natural products well known to people from La Rochelle, sits. While evolving in the landscaped garden that surrounds the site, it is possible to see numerous aromatic and medicinal plants growing. Just behind these two hectares dedicated to permaculture and organic farming hides the glass and wood building in which the future of the group was imagined. Committed to an ethical and responsible approach, which has always resulted in compliance with organic and ecological standards, and support for local producers and nature protection associations, Léa Nature wanted to move up a gear by launching Ficus, its shareholder foundation. By owning part of the group, this endowment fund distributes its dividends to shares of ecological and social interest.

Before launching Ficus, Léa Nature was already used to foundations. Emma Kloboukoff, managing director of Ficus reminds us: “It all started in 2007 with the launch of Léa Nature/Jardin BiO, which supported projects of general interest linked to the protection of nature and the promotion of organic farming.”

According to the managing director of Ficus, the discussion on the creation of a shareholder foundation began about ten years ago, through discussions with consulting firms about new property models. “It all started taking shape about 4 years ago,” she says, “and the foundation was launched in 2021.”

By taking this new step, the Léa Nature group faced other difficulties than its Swiss colleagues Rolex and Victorinox. Emma Kloboukoff indicates that in France “It is difficult to launch a shareholder foundation, because this status does not yet exist”. Indeed, the shareholder foundation is not a legal status, but a hybrid, economic and philanthropic model for the transmission and governance of companies. Under the generic name of shareholder foundation, three legal statuses are available to French entrepreneurs: the recognized public utility foundation “FRUP”, the endowment fund and the sustainability fund.

Ficus Fondaction is in reality an endowment fund, a recognized organization of general interest, which owns 6.3% of the Léa Nature group. This initiative is the result of a family reflection started several years ago by Charles Kloboukoff, the founder and majority shareholder of the Léa Nature group. In agreement with his family, he decided to gradually transmit his shares to the Ficus Foundation, through successive donations. Its objective is to guarantee the capital independence and the sustainability of the group, to preserve its historical values and its social and environmental mission, to maintain its territorial anchoring and to make it impossible to relocate.

As its managing director recalls, “If in the future, the Ficus Foundation aims to become the majority shareholder of Léa Nature, it is a very long-term project whose actions have already begun”. To do this, Ficus relies on a philanthropic committee made up of volunteer employees from the Léa Nature group. This committee defines the areas of support for the fund, its donation methods and its philanthropic policy.

For the time being, it focuses on supporting citizen initiatives that seek to reinvent certain models on which our societies depend. Its areas of support are as follows: Alternative economic models, facilitating the emergence and support of entrepreneurial models. Social action, by helping to include and defend human rights for the most disadvantaged. And health, by allowing access to quality care for all, especially children and the elderly, dependent and/or vulnerable.

By engaging in this new philanthropy model, Ficus is also an experimental and evolving fund, which questions traditional philanthropy methods in order to change practices towards more democracy. Its areas of support can thus change at the whim of the members of the philanthropic committee, which is renewed by a third every year.