Ardian's Gaillard takes over as France Invest chair

Gaillard chairs the executive board of pan-European investor Ardian. He joined the firm (then Axa Private Equity) at its inception in 1997 and currently manages the buyout, expansion, growth, co-investment and infrastructure activities. Gaillard has supervised fundraisings for more than 35 funds for a total amount of €20bn in commitments at Ardian. He also has experience from Charterhouse.

Gaillard is no stranger to France Invest duties, having been a board member from 2011-2015, as well as vice-chair and member of the association's executive committee from 2013-2015.

"I want to continue, and speed up, reforms to make private equity one of the key pillars of French economic growth," Gaillard said in a statement. "My programme is based on 18 initiatives. They should further convince leaders of family-owned companies of the benefits of private equity. They aim to remove the obstacles that hold back institutional investors in their asset allocation to unlisted companies and to help newly created management companies to grow. And lastly, one of these initiatives that is particularly close to my heart: seeking to simplify current value-sharing procedures from shareholders to employees in order to ensure that they are used far more extensively."

Gaillard takes over from Olivier Millet, the chair of Eurazeo PME, who became France Invest chair in 2016. He succeeded Michel Chabanel, the CEO of Cerea Capital, who was elected in 2014.

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• Topics
• France
• People
• people moves
• AFIC
• Ardian (formerly Axa PE)