AXA Investment Managers – Real Assets (AXA IMRA) has appointed a global head of real estate fundraising for the first time, PropertyEU has learned.
Charles Daulon du Laurens has been promoted from European head of sales, real assets to global head of the Client Capital Group, according to a memo circulated to staff last Friday.
The move to create a position in charge of 15-strong team in three continents is said to come from a desire to allow Dennis Lopez to focus exclusively on his core responsibility as global chief investment officer. Up until recently, the second-in-command at AXA's €70 bn-plus real assets division had been tasked with global client facing functions as well.
AXA IMRA's Client Capital Group is a European powerhouse in terms of raising equity for commingled real estate funds, joint ventures, club deals and separate accounts, with professionals located in Europe, North America and Asia. The team raised as much as €8.1 bn of capital in 2016. Typically, half of the equity raised for strategies comes from third parties and the other half from the AXA Group of insurance companies.
One of the primary focuses for Daulon du Laurens and the Client Capital Group is to raise further institutional capital for AXA IMRA's European CoRE Europe property fund. The open- ended fund was launched in December 2015 and has so far attracted €850 mln of commitments - but the flagship diversified fund could grow by several billion more.
Just last week the buying power of the fund was underlined when AXA announced the acquisition of a €1 bn logistics portfolio from Gramercy Property Europe. The equity for the transaction came 50:50 from the CoRE fund and AXA Group's balance sheet.
As well as the CoRE open ended fund, the Real Assets Client Capital Group is promoting AXA WF Global Flexible Property, a Luxembourg SICAV investing in liquid real estate securities, which has expanded from being for the French wholesale investor market to encompass institutional capital since AXA announced the fund's launch in May 2015. AXA is said to have raised around €300 mln of equity to date for the global REIT strategy.
Daulon du Laurens joined AXA in 2012 as head of investor relations for the Real Asset Finance department, helping to grow AXA's real estate debt platform. He is credited with increasing its third-party debt strategy capital to more than €4 bn within three years. In January 2015, he was elevated to European head of sales, taking responsibility for raising capital for AXA IMRA's entire real estate product range in Europe, both equity and debt offerings.
He continues to report to Lopez following his promotion to global head of Client Capital Group.
