"We are accelerating the drive to realise our vision of Ardian as an investment company with sustainability and positivity at its heart."
Dominique Senequier is the CEO & Founder of Ardian, a world-leading private investment house.
Supported by her teams, she has been instrumental in every phase of the company’s development. She founded the company in 1996, when Claude Bébéar asked her to create a private equity arm for AXA. In 2013, AXA Private Equity became Ardian, when, under the leadership of Ms. Senequier, the management and staff acquired the company. After achieving independence, Dominique Senequier established Ardian as an employee-owned company: the vast majority of employees are shareholders, owning approximately half of Ardian share capital. Ms. Senequier has surrounded herself with a talented team that has enabled Ardian to grow into a European leader and a global private investment house. At Ardian, we invest all of ourselves in building companies that last.
Dominique Senequier has long recognized that finance must operate as a force for good in society. Over time, she has ensured that the company puts its core values and ideals into practice by experimenting and innovating to create a comprehensive and effective approach to sustainability. Ardian’s first step on this journey was in 2008, with Dominique Senequier’s belief that shared responsibilities should bring shared rewards. She pioneered the practice of sharing the value realized on exit with all employees of portfolio companies, not just the management.
Ardian’s vision of sustainability is to empower individuals to collectively create sustainable value for all stakeholders. Over the past decade her conviction that Ardian must be a leader in sustainability has touched every aspect of its activities. It has changed the way Ardian invests and how the company measures the performance of its portfolio companies and the GPs in its Secondaries and Primaries portfolio.
In 2010, at the request of Dominique Senequier, the Ardian Foundation was created by Ardian employees to support important social causes. The Foundation aims to help talented children and young people from unprivileged backgrounds achieve their potential through education at school and university.
Dominique Senequier has won recognition internationally for her contribution to the finance industry, regularly appearing at the top of the rankings of the most powerful personalities in the world. In 2021, she was promoted Officier de la Légion d’Honneur by the President of France, Emmanuel Macron. She was also elected a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques in Political Economy, Statistics and Finance in 2023.
Ms. Senequier serves as a Vice-President of the Supervisory Board of Hermès, the French luxury goods manufacturer. In addition, she is a member of the French Actuarial Institute.
Prior to founding Ardian in 1996, Ms. Senequier was “Directeur Général de GAN Participations” at GAN Group, the insurance company, which she joined in 1980, working in reinsurance and international development. She began her career as an insurance commissioner at the French Ministry of Economy.
Dominique Senequier was one of seven women to be admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique in 1972, the first year it admitted women. She also holds a DEA (Master of Advanced Studies) in Banking and Monetary Economics from Université Paris-Sorbonne (1976).
