Ardian's Gaillard looks back on a year of independence

Alice Murray: Since moving to independence last year, Ardian has been incredibly active both on the fundraising and investment side. Did the spinout re-energise the firm, giving it a new lease of life?

Dominique Gaillard: In many ways, nothing has changed at Ardian. We have the same commitment to our investment performance, the same degree to which we value strong relationships and the same way in which we look to create returns. But the spinout has definitely given us a new lease of life. It was a very long process; it took two and a half years from bidding process to completion. While we are very happy with the outcome, it is a relief to be able to move forward now, especially for the back- and mid-office teams. The firm has certainly been re-energised.

AM: What has been your proudest achievement with Ardian since the spinout?

DG: Out of our entire workforce of 350 people at Ardian, 270 employees decided to invest in the company at the time of the spinout. This is extremely pleasing. It shows that our people believe in our potential going forward; they want to share our success, and they want to invest more. We weren't expecting such strong numbers.

AM: How has the spinout impacted your relationship with your investors? Is there better alignment?

DG: As we are now majority-owned by our employees, there is definitely a better alignment. The success of our investors is our success. When we were part of Axa we regularly had to fight against 'captive fund syndrome', especially in the US, where investors were worried that we wouldn't act independently from our parent. So for a long time we had to prove ourselves and our own strategy.

We now no longer have to justify our ability to act independently anymore. And of course, we are more motivated by acting on our own strategy. This has meant that our relationship with our LPs is much easier now.

AM: What was the most challenging aspect of becoming independent?

DG: The biggest challenge was making sure that the teams investing and managing our investments could carry on with their jobs without being troubled by the spinout. 

We therefore did not let any of the stress or pressure of the negotiations filter beyond the top four people in the group. This kept employees' minds as free as possible to carry on with investing and portfolio growth.

They could see that we were busy and spending a lot of time on the negotiations, but we wanted to keep the pressure on our shoulders so they could keep focused.

AM: What advice would you give to a team looking to spin out?

DG: If a team is looking to spin out from a parent that was also providing 100% of fund commitments, the team has to make sure that commitments for its new funds are secured either by the seller or as part of the spinout transaction, or by a new set of LPs before the deal goes through.

AM: Ardian has successfully diversified into several different investment areas; are there plans to move into any more strategies?

DG: Our first priority is to use our existing expertise to raise bigger funds. Fortunately we have the right client base to support this.

Secondly, our aim is to continue following our core strategy across our businesses but to expand geographically. While we invest globally through our fund-of-funds programme, for direct investments we only invest in Europe. So the natural extension would be to expose ourselves to new territories.

Ultimately we will look to further diversification through adjoining strategies.

AM: What is in store for Ardian over the next year?

DG: Fundraising, fundraising, fundraising! While investing is our core focus, 2015 will be heavy for fundraising. It is a good time to go out to market, especially given the strong activity we've had on the exit side recently, meaning we are starting to close off some of our older funds.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• GPs
• Q&A
• Ardian (formerly Axa PE)
• Top story
• France