Ardian to take centre stage at Paris edition of IPEM

The Covid-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of IPEM’s annual gathering in Cannes earlier this year, but the international private equity conference will return on September 8-9, 2021, with a special two-day event in Paris, at the Hippodrome ParisLongchamp racecourse. 

Ardian has sponsored IPEM – the International Private Equity Market – since its launch in 2016 and will support it once again. Three senior investment professionals from Ardian will speak at the Paris event, which is entitled “Building Back the European Economy” and will focus on bringing industry professionals together after a long period of enforced separation.

“The main objective of this IPEM, relocated to Paris in September due to the exceptional circumstances, is to reconnect the European private equity industry after 18 months of videoconferences and webinars,” he adds. “Of course, private equity has demonstrated its resilience in 2020 and 2021 is already shaping up to be a record year. We must not forget that we are in a ‘people business’ where relationships are paramount.”

Philippe Poletti, Member of the Executive Committee, CEO of Ardian France and Head of Ardian Buyout, will lead a session on the first morning, exploring the links between ownership practices and financial returns.  

The session, ‘When outstanding stewardship also means outsized returns’, will look at how supporting customers, employees and suppliers has created value during the pandemic, and explore how improving sustainability has fuelled better financial performance in Ardian Buyout’s portfolio. He will also explain why Ardian believes that private equity firms that want to promote good corporate citizenship in investee companies must concentrate on their own performance first and aim to lead by example. 

Also on the first morning, Ardian is sponsoring the invitation-only LP Workshop, introduced by Edouard Boscher, Chief Operating Officer of Investor Relations at Ardian, where Marie-Victoire Rozé, Senior Managing Director, Ardian Fund of Funds and Member of the Ardian Secondary Fund Committee, will discuss the changing LP/GP relationship. 

This session will offer insights from the crisis in areas such as contingency planning, crisis management and portfolio resilience, and will explain how Ardian Fund of Funds maintains investment discipline in a buoyant market. Communication with LPs is an area that Ardian prioritised strongly during the Covid-19 crisis and Rozé will talk about the best practices that Ardian adopted during this period to provide transparency for investors. 

More than 2,000 people are expected to attend the two-day event, with representatives of around 280 GPs and 300 investors, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurers, banks and family offices. 

IPEM will return to Cannes for its next event, in early 2022, where Ardian will be a major sponsor for the seventh year.