| Paris looks across the Atlantic for innovation |
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| 11/07/2004 | |
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The Paris financial marketplace seems to be definitely looking at its neighbours for innovation and growth. That was tone of the debate set on Thursday morning, when the Europlace Forum, which seeks to promote Paris as a European financial hub, kicked off for two days of ongoing seminars and conferences on July 8th Denis Duverne, the Chief Investment Officer of Axa, one of the panellist of the opening round table on the fund management industry and its prospects for "long-term economy financing", listed four trends currently modelling the French marketplace, all of which had at least one thing in common: they all come from the US. In front of a crowded room, he noted that trackers, hedge funds, inflation-linked bonds – France is at this time the most important issuer of this type of vehicle in Europe – and multi-management were currently reshaping, or about to shape, the French asset management industry and provided much needed dynamism on the financial marketplace. He also said that a "management style along the growth and value lines as in the US has still not come to Europe, but seems to be about set in". Fillon Law Along the same line, Alain Leclair, the Chairman of the French Asset Management Association declared that he was quite proud to announce that "pension funds had now come to France", referring to the launch earlier this year of two special retirement plans now allowing employees or companies to top up the benefits of pay-as-you-go schemes, introducing an element of defined contribution scheme in the French retirement landscape. That was also a hint to the establishment of a first-of-its-kind retirement reserve fund in France, the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), which has closed its mammoth-sized tendering process on July 7th by awarding its last mandates, for a total of €16 billion. (see link beside) Funnily enough, this round table assembled representatives of two of the FRR's main beneficiaries, Denis Duverne of Axa, and John J. Brennan, the Chairman and CEO of the Vanguard Group. Those two managers top the league table of the FRR's volume of assets under management, in charge of respectively €2 billion and €1,6 billion worth of assets. This led Antoine de Salins, the representative of the FRR sitting on the round-table to joke that "one consulting the Paris Europlace Forum schedule a couple of weeks ago could have easily forecast the result of our tendering process". Julien Laplante |
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