Welcome to the Hexagon Compliance Briefing

The strength of Hexagon’s reputation and business success is built on the ethical and lawful conduct of our employees and third parties acting on our behalf. On the downside, Hexagon might be held accountable not only for its employees’ misconduct but also for law violations committed by third parties acting on Hexagon’s behalf. These are the main reasons why we would like to brief you on our expectations in regard to your business and compliance practices when you act on Hexagon’s behalf.

Please ensure that the management and personnel involved in Hexagon business will receive this briefing by providing them the link to this website or the briefing PDF available for download on this website.

If you have any questions about this briefing, or about Hexagon’s compliance expectations in general, please do not hesitate to contact us by sending an email to compliance@hexagon.com.  

Thank you very much in advance for your kind understanding and support.  

Determining the right thing to do is not always obvious. This briefing defines Hexagon’s expectations and requirements for activities performed on our behalf and should be used as a central guide and reference to support your day-to-day decision-making. However, it’s impossible to provide guidance for all situations. In a situation for which this briefing does not provide guidance, the following questions can help you make the right decision: 

1. Is it legal, ethical and fair? 
2. Would it embarrass Hexagon or harm Hexagon’s reputation if it became publicly known? 
3. Would Hexagon approve of it? 
4. Would you feel comfortable telling Hexagon about it? 

Hexagon has developed and implemented various procedures and tools that help us to identify “red flags” while engaging third parties or conducting business in general. Red flags refer to the circumstances that indicate an increased probability of non-compliance with applicable law and their appearance would require an involvement of the compliance personnel, who would then work on their resolution. When your engagement is approved, you will play an important role in helping us to collect the relevant information about business transactions in which you will participate on Hexagon’s behalf(i.e. end user, end use etc.) We expect you to provide us with complete and correct information in the course of your engagement or during our relationship.   

A conflict of interest is a situation in which a person or entity has competing interests or loyalties and cannot make a fair decision because of this conflict. A conflict of interest can hinder the success of a company, lead to economic damages, and damage the company’s reputation and integrity. In some cases, conflicts of interest might also bear corruption or antitrust risks. 

 

We compete fairly by offering innovative products and services at competitive prices to our customers, not by offering improper benefits to others. Likewise, we do not tolerate any form of corruption in business dealings through our external partners. Moreover, anti-corruption laws do not tend to differentiate between acts of our employees and acts done by our external partners acting on our behalf.  

Bribery is the most common form of corruption. Giving bribes includes all acts of promising and giving money or some other item of value to a government official or to a decision maker in the private sector to influence their action or obtain an improper advantage in the discharge of their public or legal duties. The term government official must be understood broadly to include officials or employees of any government or other public body, agency or legal entity at any level, including officers or employees of state-owned enterprises and public international organizations. It also includes candidates for political office, political party officials and employees as well as political parties. 

The use of third parties to unlawfully or improperly influence public officials or private individuals is considered to be a form of indirect bribery and is also prohibited.  

Bribery also covers facilitation payments. A facilitation payment is a relatively small amount of money, or the granting of any other benefit, usually to low-ranking public officials, for their personal benefit to expedite the performance or perform a routine governmental action. 

In many cultures, gifts and invitations to entertainment events are important for developing and deepening business relationships. However, some gifts and invitations may unreasonably influence the recipient’s decision-making or create the appearance of improper influence. Gifts, hospitality and other benefits must always be in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. In any case they must:  

• Be transparent and correctly recorded in the company’s books and records. 
• Be appropriate in terms of type, value, and frequency to the occasion and the position of the recipient. 
• Not be offered, provided, demanded or accepted with the expectation of any type of advantage.  
• Never give the appearance of dishonesty or inappropriateness.  

When acting on Hexagon’s behalf we expect you

• strictly prohibited from any form of direct or indirect bribery, including facilitation payments and inappropriate gifts and entertainment;  
• expected to conduct reasonable due diligence on third parties you will engage in connection with Hexagon business at the beginning of their activities and to monitor them during business relationships.  
• expected to maintain books, records and accounts which accurately reflect any and all payments made, expenses incurred, and assets disposed of and to maintain an internal control system to ensure the proper authorization, recording and reporting of all transactions. 

Antitrust and fair competition laws protect free, undistorted, and effective competition. Prohibited, amongst other things, are agreements and concerted practices between companies that restrict competition. Such anticompetitive agreements include bid rigging, price fixing, market or customer allocations. Abusing a dominant position is also prohibited. Violating protected trade secrets and intellectual property rights of third parties may be considered as unfair competition.  

When acting on Hexagon’s behalf we expect you

• to comply with applicable antitrust laws (e.g., not to participate in bid rigging, price fixing, market or customer sharing with competitors) and 
• to respect trade secrets and the intellectual property rights of Hexagon and third-parties, such as competitors, customers, and sales partners.  

Hexagon must comply with all export regulations and sanctions applicable to Hexagon or our products and services, including but not limited to EU and US export controls and sanctions. In particular, Hexagon cannot engage in transactions with sanctioned parties, or with any party located in embargoed countries and territories (currently Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea and Sevastopol), or for sanctioned projects or prohibited end uses, or to facilitate the diversion of our products to a different country or to a different end user. Further, we are legally required to ensure that we don’t violate export controls and sanctions when we sell through our resellers or dealers, to whom the export regulations and sanctions might not apply. To comply with these legal requirements Hexagon has implemented an export screening procedure to screen transactions for export compliance risks. This procedure allows us to filter transactions that pose increased non-compliance risks and have them verified by the trained personnel.  

When acting on Hexagon’s behalf we expect you

• to reasonably assist us with our export screening efforts by providing complete and correct information about end destination, end user and end use, as requested by us via export checklists, or any other additional information and documentation that we might reasonably request (e.g., end use certificate signed by the end user);  
• to participate in export controls trainings offered by Hexagon, as requested; 
• to agree contractually to comply with export restrictions and sanctions, as applicable to Hexagon and Hexagon products;  
• to certify your compliance with these requirements by signing a certificate, as requested by Hexagon from time to time;  
• to take reasonable steps to increase awareness of our export screening procedure among your resellers; and 
• to impose on your resellers legally binding obligations similar to those imposed by Hexagon upon you.  

It is important that Hexagon obtains knowledge of possible compliance violations by its employees and business partners. Therefore, you are encouraged and expected to report any incidents of non-compliance. Your report may result in Hexagon’s internal inquiries, investigations by public authorities and other consequences. For this reason, you should only report what is true to the best of your knowledge. The integrity of the reporting process is taken very seriously, and as such, information provided, and the reporter’s identity will be handled in confidentiality and only shared with the parties responsible for further examination of the report.  

Reports can be submitted to Hexagon’s compliance team via email at compliance@hexagon.com.  

In addition, you can report misconduct via Hexagon’s Ethics & Compliance Reporting System.  The Ethics & Compliance Reporting System is operated by a third-party supplier on Hexagon’s behalf and provides several options for secure reporting, available at all times and in multiple languages. All reports are exclusively handled by Hexagon. The Ethics & Compliance Reporting System can be used for submission of anonymous reports.