'Tikehau supporting SMEs for green and digital transition'

Being global offers significant advantages: it diversifies our customer base and our investments. Despite the debate on issues of deglobalisation and national sovereignty, markets are still interconnected. Our business is global, we are present in Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East: we have 17 offices around the world with around 800 employees. We position ourselves between global savings on the one hand and industrial companies on the other: we help investors to find the right opportunities, present all over the world. And we support companies to seize opportunities on a global scale.

An example?

We helped an Italian company open a production plant in Mexico, taking advantage of the reshoring trend. The Middle East is growing rapidly, Arab countries are reinvesting oil and gas revenues in renewable energy, innovation and artificial intelligence. So we opened an office in Abu Dhabi and started investing in the UAE: for example, in a luxury packaging company. We are in Asia: we started in Singapore in 2014, followed by expansions to Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong this year.

Do investors trust your choices?

When we started operating in Italy, Banca Intesa and Poste Italiane trusted us by providing initial support. Today, 20 years later, we continue to collaborate with them, a testament to the strength and longevity of our partnerships. And we have been fortunate to receive the initial support of important entrepreneurs and family businesses, including the Arnault family and, more recently, Alexandre Van Damme, the main shareholder of AB InBev.

How much do you rely onthe partners?

We are proud of our strong partnership-oriented culture. We have formed several partnerships with major asset management players such as Temasek in Singapore or Nikko AM in Japan, and have launched our private equity strategies together with key partners such as TotalEnergies for our decarbonisation fund, Unilever and AXA for our regenerative agriculture fund, and Airbus, Safran, Dassault and Thales for aerospace and defence.

You want to call yourself an entrepreneur because you risk your capital. Is that so?

Our interests are fully aligned with those of the investors whose capital we raise. They can be assured that we will manage their capital with the same caution and care as we manage ours, as Tikehau Capital invests in each of its funds. When we started in alternative investments, we invested EUR 400,000 in Tikehau Capital. If we had failed, we would have lost all our savings. This approach has remained unchanged over time: Tikehau Capital has a net worth of EUR 3.1 billion, 58% of which is owned by management and employees. This makes a big difference...

Did the switch from negative to restrictive rates also make a difference?

The recent rise in rates has brought an end to the era of zero-cost debt: in essence, the party is over. The ECB may lower short-term rates, but long-term rates are expected to remain high, due to high levels of debt, particularly government debt. Rising rates have also triggered housing crises in China, the US and Europe, and we believe the impact is not yet over.

This year Tikehau Capital celebrates 20 years of solid growth. How did you get started?

When we launched Tikehau Capital 20 years ago it was just the two of us and a few pens. We met in Merrill Lynch in the late 1990s. We were working like crazy, but being in Merrill Lynch gave us the opportunity to witness a huge change that was happening in the US financial markets at the time: disintermediation, supported by the rise of alternative asset managers. KKR, Blackstone and Apollo inspired us, they were getting bigger and bigger and we got curious: they were channelling private sector savings into the real economy. We thought we could do the same in Europe and Tikehau Capital was among the first asset managers to launch private lending on the continent. We did what at the time only banks did.