On a mild autumn day about three months ago, the head of China’s main sovereign wealth fund visited an office on Place Vendôme in Paris, just across from the Ritz Hotel. Accompanied by his staff — but with no attendant fanfare — Ding Xuedong, chairman of China Investment Corporation, had come to pay his respects to Dominique Senequier.
大约3个月前一个风和日丽的秋日，中国主要财富主权基金负责人来到巴黎旺多姆广场的一个办公室，对面是丽兹酒店(Ritz hotel)。中投公司(CIC)董事长丁学东在工作人员的陪同下，低调拜访了法国私人股本基金经理多米尼克•塞内基耶(Dominique Senequier)。The meeting, captured by a photograph now sitting on the marble mantelpiece of Ms Senequier’s 18th-century wood-panelled office, is testament to the international clout of the French private equity fund manager.
此次会晤证明了塞内基耶在国际上的影响力。在她的18世纪风格实木装饰办公室的大理石壁炉台上，摆放着两人会面的相片。The 61-year-old executive oversees $50bn of assets — the largest and most diversified platform of its kind in Europe — after spinning off her employer , Ardian, from French insurer Axa a year ago.
一年前，这位61岁的首席执行官完成了让Ardian从法国保险商安盛集团(Axa)剥离的工作，如今管理着500亿美元的资产——Ardian是欧洲最大、最为多元化的私人股本投资平台。
The creation of Ardian, previously known as Axa Private Equity, turned out to be one of the greatest challenges in Ms Senequier’s three-decade career in the sector, not least because French politics lurched to the left at a crucial time for the deal.
Ardian的前身是安盛私人股本(Axa Private Equity)。它的诞生是塞内基耶在该领域30年职业生涯中最大的挑战之一，尤其是因为法国政治在交易的关键时期突然向左转。Ms Senequier recalls how drastic tax increases on capital gains and high earners announced by President François Hollande jeopardised the planned spin-off. For months, the fund manager was unable to estimate its costs.
塞内基耶回忆道，法国总统弗朗索瓦•奥朗德(François Hollande)宣布大幅提高资本利得税税率和针对高收入人群的税收，一度危及剥离计划。在长达几个月的时间里，这位基金经理无法估算其成本。“We didn’t know what measures parliament would pass. Investors willing to back us in the spin-off were not able to predict our cash flows. That was very complicated,” she says.
她表示：“那时我们不知道议会将投票通过何种举措。愿意支持我们剥离的投资者无法预测我们的现金流。情况非常复杂。”That experience has helped to feed a general frustration with the way her business and industry is treated in France — in spite of all the attention lavished on it by foreign dignitaries. Ms Senequier would even go so far as to say that being a woman in this male-dominated world has been less of a burden than being French.
这种经历让人们普遍对她的企业乃至私人股本业在法国所受的待遇感到沮丧，尽管外国政要对该行业极为关注。塞内基耶甚至说道，在这个男性主导的世界里，做法国人比做女人还要烦。“We get absolutely no support,” she snaps. “France does not really understand what we do. We are one of the biggest in our field, which means something abroad, but not in France. Private equity is not part of the country’s culture.”
她突然提高声音说道：“我们得不到任何支持。法国不太明白我们是做什么的。我们是私人股本领域中最大的公司之一，这在国外意义重大，但在法国并非如此。私人股本不是这个国家文化的一部分。”Unlike the US, home of the world’s biggest buyout firms, such as Blackstone, KKRand Carlyle, France does not have any significant pension funds that are able to provide private equity groups with a local base for growth.
与黑石(Blackstone)、KKR和凯雷(Carlyle)等全球最大收购公司所在的美国不同，法国没有可以为私人股本集团提供本土增长基础的大型养老基金。In addition, politicians do not fully grasp the role of finance in the economy and have consistently sought to undermine it, she says. Mr Hollande, for instance, identified the world of finance as his “true adversary” during his 2012 campaign.
此外，塞内基耶表示，政客们并不充分理解金融在经济中的角色，而是一直在寻求削弱这种角色。例如，奥朗德在2012年竞选期间曾将金融世界视为他“真正的对手”。The hostility at home obliges her to do a lot of explaining when raising money from North American pension plans and sovereign wealth funds in Asia and the Middle East. “For about 15 years, our political leaders have launched attacks against finance. When you travel, you have to answer a lot of questions about that,” she says.
由于国内的这种敌意，塞内基耶在从北美养老金计划以及亚洲和中东主权财富基金筹集资金的时候，不得不进行大量解释工作。她表示：“大约15年来，我们的政治领导人对金融发起了攻击。当你出差的时候，你不得不回答大量的相关问题。”About 80 per cent of its assets are invested outside France, largely in the US, and its fund of funds team, which invests in buyout funds and is the company’s largest unit, has recently moved to London — not for tax reasons she insists, but to comply with new European legislation.
该公司大约80%的资产投资于法国境外，大部分在美国，其“基金的基金”团队最近搬到了伦敦，她坚称这并非是为了避税，而是为了遵守新的欧洲法规。“基金的基金”团队投资于收购资金，是Ardian最大的部门。She says she will not relocate her company’s headquarters elsewhere. “France is going through a lot of instability but it is a big, resilient economy,” she says.
塞内基耶说，不会将公司总部搬到其他地区。她表示：“法国正在经历许多动荡，但它是一个庞大的、具有弹性的经济体。”Ms Senequier was born in Toulon; her father was a marine engineer. One of the first seven women to graduate from Ecole Polytechnique, France’s elite engineering school, she spent five years in the finance ministry as an insurance commissioner, then set up insurer GAN’s private equity arm in 1985.
塞内基耶出生于土伦，父亲是一名航海工程师。她毕业于法国一流工程院校——巴黎综合理工学院(Ecole Polytechnique)，是该校首批7名女性毕业生之一。塞内基耶毕业后在财政部当了5年的保险事务专员，随后于1985年在保险公司GAN创办了私人股本部门。A decade later, she attempted to spin off the unit, securing funding from London-based investment firm Electra Fleming. But her bid was rejected in a highly political process that involved a bailout of GAN by the French state.
10年后，她试图将该部门剥离出去，并从伦敦投行Electra Fleming筹得了资金。但在一个高度政治化的过程（涉及法国政府纾困GAN）中，她的出价被拒绝了。Forced to leave, she turned to Claude Bébéar, Axa’s then chief executive and a fellow Polytechnique alumnus. Called the “godfather of French capitalism” for his influence over France’s corporate life, Mr Bébéar offered to help her start Axa’s private equity business, pledging to match half of what she raised from other investors.
被迫离开GAN后，她求助于时任安盛首席执行官的克洛德•贝贝阿(Claude Bébéar)。同样毕业于巴黎综合理工学院的贝贝阿，因其在法国商界拥有的影响力而被称为“法国资本主义的教父”。他提供机会，让她开创安盛的私人股本业务，他还承诺贡献资金，数额为她从其他投资者那里筹得资金总额的一半。