This interview by Virginie Deneuville was originally released on the L’AGEFI website on 8 September to mark the publication of its IPEM special edition. It has been reprinted here with the permission of L’AGEFI. Additional links have been added in the version that appears below. A PDF from L’AGEFI Private Equity is available within the ICG Client Lounge.
While private markets are currently going through a phase of contraction, ICG continues to accelerate its development. How do you explain that?
Private markets are indeed going through a particularly difficult cycle — probably even harder than the one linked to the 2008 crisis. This period is reshuffling the cards: some players are being, or will be, forced to scale back, while others, with a solid platform and a track record of performance, are able to accelerate. Our trajectory is above all the result of our transformation. When I joined the ICG group in 2002, we were essentially managing our own balance sheet and operating as a listed investment company. The real turning point came after the financial crisis. Our performance attracted the attention of institutional investors, who encouraged us to build a genuine third-party asset management business. Our first fund represented a few hundred million euros.
Today, we manage close to $130 billion across strategies covering hybrid capital, private debt, secondaries, infrastructure and real estate.
How does that translate into fundraising?
The market has become more demanding, and some fundraises are taking longer. But if you look at the last two years — which have nonetheless been particularly tough for the sector — all of our established funds have hit their hard cap. In several cases, we could even have raised more. Our latest hybrid capital vehicle, Europe Fund IX, which has just closed at €12 billion, was very significantly oversubscribed. Under our strategic plan through 2028, we had set ourselves a fundraising target of $55 billion. We should reach it a year early, as was already the case under the previous plan, where we were targeting $40 billion by the end of 2024. That shows that when performance delivers, institutional capital stays committed. The main constraint on our industry is not fundraising. In a market where deal volumes have contracted and competition is intensifying, the real challenge is finding enough quality investment opportunities.
20%, that is the average gross IRR on investments made by our last five funds since 2011, with a multiple of 2.2x
Tell us about hybrid capital, one of your main pillars?
Our historic hybrid capital business — providing flexible financing solutions that combine debt and equity — today represents $34 billion of assets under management, making us the world’s leading player in this strategy. We develop it in Europe, across both large-cap and mid-cap, and in Asia, but not in the United States, despite demand from several of our investors. This strategy, which relies mainly on lightly-intermediated deals carried out directly with entrepreneurs and family shareholders, is complex to execute. It requires strong origination capability and, therefore, a substantial local network. The US market is also more transactional, with more standardised deals, where this intermediate financing space is less natural. It is also necessary to recruit the right team — people able to handle both equity and debt — which is not easy.
What is your positioning in the secondaries market, which is currently booming?
We were lucky, or perhaps visionary! We took a contrarian approach to the secondaries market. While it was focused on the sale of portfolio fund stakes, often at steep discounts, to meet investors’ liquidity needs, we decided as early as 2014 to focus instead on high-quality assets that managers wanted to retain control of, while offering an exit window to limited partners (LPs) who wanted one. That gave us the advantage of limited discounts, less pressured processes, and real potential for additional value creation. Non-existent at the time, this continuation-fund market is now booming, but it must not be diverted to address more constrained distribution issues. We receive so many opportunities that we could have invested our latest fund, closed at $11 billion, in under a year. But today we turn down the majority of the deals we see, focusing only on the best assets that general partners (GPs) genuinely want to hold for the long term!
Concerns about direct lending are legitimate but poorly targeted
How are you evolving in this secondaries market?
Alongside continuation funds, we more recently launched into the LP-led segment. Grouped under the same term “secondaries”, these two strategies actually have nothing in common and require separate teams! While continuation funds are comparable to private equity in terms of strategy and returns, the approach is radically different for a strategy focused on acquiring a stake in an existing LP portfolio, which involves managing volumes and data from multiple portfolio lines. We raised $1 billion for our first fund in 2024. In a market where LPs are seeking liquidity more than ever, this strategy is an important growth driver for ICG.
You are also very active in private debt, which is currently facing a wave of distrust. How do you view it?
We manage close to $50 billion in credit, of which $30 billion is in private debt, deployed across various strategies in Europe, Australia and the United States. Concerns focus more specifically on one segment of this asset class: US direct lending. They are legitimate but poorly targeted. Highly publicised cases of fraud or bankruptcy do not call into question the quality of the asset class as a whole. Default rates in fact remain very low. Heavy exposure to the software sector, whose business model could be disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI), may raise concerns about lower asset valuations. But that is a matter for equity investors — software’s recurring cash flows protect debt providers. The real issue, however, is the gradual erosion of legal protections in a direct lending market that has become highly competitive, particularly in the United States. We avoid any deal where the covenants are insufficient and which, in practice, no longer amount to genuine senior debt risk.
Why did you choose to form a partnership with Amundi?
This partnership is based on a strategic alignment — with Amundi taking a stake in our capital — and on strong complementarities between our two groups. We combine our expertise in alternative assets with Amundi’s distribution power and its deep knowledge of private banking and wealth management networks in Europe. We are convinced that the wealth segment represents an important growth driver for our industry. Retail investors remain under-exposed to private markets, while the lengthening of savings horizons — particularly as pension arrangements develop in Europe, as we are already seeing in Germany — is creating a growing need for long-term investment solutions. This shift will, however, need to be accompanied by significant investor-education efforts. Private markets are long-term investments, and it is essential that investors understand their characteristics, particularly regarding liquidity.
In real assets, rolling out a strategy in secondaries or in credit could make sense
Consolidation is now the order of the day in private markets. Are you considering external growth deals?
We have carried out all of our development organically and now have sufficient scale. That said, we are not ruling out external growth opportunities, but they need to make real strategic sense for our investors. Also, adding new business lines can generate synergies, but far less than people think. LPs above all assess each strategy individually, based on its size, track record and positioning. Across our established strategies, our vehicles are all above $10 billion, which is a differentiating strength. We regularly consider expanding our existing range, which currently covers around twenty strategies. In infrastructure, where we invest in equity in continental Europe, we launched an Asia-focused strategy at the end of 2025, where we see attractive opportunities in the renewable energy sector. In this real-assets segment, rolling out a strategy in secondaries — where we currently target private equity exclusively — or in credit could make sense.
ICG is listed on the London Stock Exchange. What are the advantages, but also the drawbacks, particularly in terms of valuation?
It’s true that the valuation level can be seen as a drawback. British asset managers generally trade at levels roughly half those of their American counterparts. That’s a feature of the market as a whole, not just our sector. But the listing also gives us a balance sheet of £2.6 billion (€3 billion, editor’s note), which lets us fund our development organically, invest alongside our teams in our funds to strengthen alignment of interests, or seed new strategies. The advantages far outweigh the drawbacks.
As a Frenchman leading a British company, how do you view France?
I am the second Frenchman to lead ICG, and one of the co-founders, Jean-Loup Brousse de Gersigny, who was from Mauritius, was a French speaker. France has always held an important place in the group’s history. Our Paris office is today our third-largest by size, behind London and New York, and is home in particular to our infrastructure team. France offers many investment opportunities. Even more than in Anglo-Saxon countries, knowledge of the local business fabric, of entrepreneurs, and of the language remains a decisive factor. Fundamentally, growth doesn’t change the basics of our business: it is still the teams, relationships built on trust, and the quality of origination that make the difference.
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