Capital and soft power to grow small excellences

From France to Italy, where he has invested in 40 companies: here is Tikehau Capital, “global alternative manager”, Speaks the founder, Mathieu Chabran

When twenty years ago now Mathieu Chabran left Merrill Lynch with his colleague Antoine Flamarion, they thought he was crazy. “Crazy” even wrote the Financial Times. Two young Frenchmen, two hotheads, 28 years old Mathieu and 31 Antoine, who left a finance aircraft carrier to embark on their own small, indeed tiny boat and sail a sea that was then little known, making room for themselves in a credit market dominated by big banks. It was still the era of mergers and acquisitions, of “turbo-finance”, of the last Gordon Gekkos who bought companies to resell them piecemeal, but the new generation was looking for another frontier rooted in the “real economy”: manage savings and assets to grow businesses.