PROGRAM
 

JANUARY 29:

Pan-European dealmaking in 2025, with François Jerphagnon | 11am CET - 11.45am CET

The interest rate tide is receding. What does this mean for European dealmaking in 2025? Is this evolution enough to trigger a wave of deals? Is buy-and-build still the flavor of the day, or is there a new playbook? Where do the valuations stand currently and where are they heading to? Are large/mega buyouts coming back? Should we expect more European delistings? Given the amount of dry powder, and a relative dearth of deals over the course of the last quarters, is there a risk that managers rush to deploy capital and thus lower the bar in terms of quality and accept higher valuations simply to do deals? Are they valuation bubbles, for example for impact-driven business models? 

Speakers:

• François Jerphagnon, Member of the Executive Committee, Managing Director of Ardian France & Head of Expansion
• Stefano Drago, Founding Partner, Mid-Market Fund, PAI Partners 
• Stephanie Daul, Vice President, Harbourvest 
• Korbinian Knoblach, Partner and Co-Head of PE, Trill Impact 
• Stephane Barret, Head of Private Capital Group & Global Head of TMT Sector, Credit Agricole CIB (moderator)
   

How fund managers are adapting to seize the wealth opportunity, with Erwan Paugam | 11.15am - 12pm CET 

What are the specificities of private wealth clients compared to “historical” clients? Identify key areas fund managers needed to handle in order to address private wealth clients / Building bridges between private capital and private wealth.

Speakers: 

• Erwan Paugam, Head of Private Wealth Solutions and Senior Managing Director, Ardian
• José Luis González Pastor, Neuberger Berman 
• Peter Beske Nielsen, Global Head of Private Wealth, EQT 
• Alisa Amarosa Wood, Partner, KKR  
• Michael SIDGMORE, Partner & Co-Founder of Broadhaven Ventures and the AGM Studio, Founder of Alt Goes Mainstream (moderator)

Sharing value with management and employees, with Stéphanie Bensimon | 4pm to 4.30pm CET

A successful deal very often involves the active implication of highly motived managers and employees. What are the best practices to share the resulting performance with them? What can be considered as a fair share of the performance for managers and employees? Should such performance sharing mechanisms become mandatory? How to reconcile such mechanism with the necessity to maintain high performance for fund investors (and to retain a high position when being benchmarked with the peers)?  

Speakers:

• Stéphanie Bensimon, Member of the Executive Committee, Member of the board of Ardian France & Head of Real Estate
• Aglaé Touchard Le Drian, Managing Partner and Co-Head, RAISE Impact
• Tanguy Tauzinat, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Trajan Capital
• Florent Lauzet, Group Partner Siparex ETI, Member of the Executive Committee, Siparex
• James Davidson, Dentons (moderator)
   

JANUARY 30:

Direct lending after the bonanza, with Guillaume Chinardet | 10.45am - 11.15am CET 

Direct lending has grown significantly, notably in Europe, on the back of the bank retrenchment after 2008. Is there still room to grow? What would be the first warning signals that the market has reached maturity? Should we expect durably lower spreads going forward? Are covenants expected to remain light? Are the lending standards still strong enough? Should the resurgence of other forms of non-bank lending be seen as an excessive appetite for alternative lending? 

Speakers: 

• Guillaume Chinardet, Deputy Head of Private Credit & Senior Managing Director, Ardian 
• Luke Gillam, Partner, Head of Senior Direct Lending, Albacore Capital  
• Adrien Desbois, Investment Manager, European Investment Fund 
• Barbara Ellero, Partner & Head of Private Capital, Anthilia SGR 
• Edouard Narboux, President, Aether Financial Services (moderator)

Mega trends investing in Europe: data & AI, with Pauline Thomson | 2.30pm - 3.15pm 

Nobel Prize Robert Solow once quipped that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”. Does this also apply to the so-called “artificial intelligence”? Do these technologies need their “killer app” to unleash an innovation wave – and if so, what would it be? Beyond a few highly valued start-ups, what is the investment landscape in such technologies? Beyond the hype, can one invest safely in AI? How do fund managers analyse the idea of investing in such capital-intensive industries? What about the “ethical” side of AI? Can open-source AI take over and sideline for-profit players? What are the early successes (through exits) that could inspire investors? 
 

Speakers: 

• Pauline Thomson, Head of Data Science & Managing Director
• Morgan Laughlin, Managing Director, Global Head Data Center Investments , PGIM Investment 
• Charles Edouard Bouée, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Adagia 
• Tatiana Jama, Founding Partner, Sistafund 
• Marianne Tordeux, Public Affairs director at France Digitale and Counselor at the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council (moderator)