LPEA Announces New Management

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Luxembourg Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (LPEA) held on Monday saw the retirement of Paul Junck as Managing Director, who will be replaced by Rajaa Mekouar-Schneider from September 2019.

Paul Junck’s commitment to the association was widely recognised by its members. Under his leadership, LPEA grew to become a critical and active player of the private equity and venture capital sector in Luxembourg. With 212 Members today, the LPEA’s success has been attributed largely due to the determination and skills of its soon-to-retire Managing Director.

As a result of this management change, Rajaa Mekouar-Schneider is resigning from her role as President of LPEA and will be replaced by Claus Mansfeldt, Chairman & Managing Director of SwanCap Investment Management S.A. Claus has been a member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of LPEA since 2018. He will remain its Chairman until the end of the current mandate ending May 2020. The Board of Directors approved this change on 15 April 2019 and communicated it to the LPEA members at the AGM.

Rajaa Mekouar-Schneider, Head of Private Equity for a Luxembourg Single Family Office, has been a Board member of LPEA since May 2016 and its elected Chairwoman since July 2018. Since her election, the association increased its member count by over 20%, with mostly GPs/ LPs joining, thus expanding the reach of LPEA to Private Equity investors. She was the initiator of LPEA Insights Conference Series in 2017, now an annual go-to event for Private Equity practitioners. She also launched the PE4Women group, the Single Family Office platform and the ESG Technical Committee. Rajaa helped raise LPEA’s and the PE industry profile in the media as she featured in many publications describing the key trends in the Private Equity industry and its key role in the wider economy.

These management changes will come into effect as of 1 September 2019.

The AGM also saw the presentation of LPEA’s Strategy 2020+, which derives from a 360º review of the association in its local and international context. The key outcome included the need to preserve its core assets and building on its success to stay ahead of the Private Equity industry’s challenges, as it becomes more institutional and complex in nature and structure. One of the core recommendations concerns the opportunity to develop more tailor-made content and support to the association's different member groups.

The AGM concluded with a keynote speech by LPEA guest Nasir Zubairi, CEO of The LHoFT on digital disruption affecting the financial industry, just as LPEA is getting closer to the start-up ecosystem and Venture Capital becomes a growing part of Private Equity.