French privately held group Ardian has announced the appointment of three managing directors to strengthen its new business line centred on real estate.
Ardian has appointed Stéphanie Bensimon as managing director France, Rodolfo Petrosino as managing director Southern Europe, and Bernd Haggenmüller will join as managing director Germany. They will be based in Paris, Milan and Frankfurt respectively.
The appointments add to the hiring of Bertrand Julien-Laferrière as head of Ardian Real Estate last September and of Oliver Piani as senior advisor and chairman of the Ardian Real Estate Investment Committee. Over the next year, Ardian plans to further expand its multi-local real estate team to reach 15 people in Paris, Frankfurt and Milan.
Ardian Real Estate will focus on the main cities of the three largest economies of the Eurozone, Germany, France and Italy, where Ardian already has an extensive background in direct private investment. Ardian said it will target commercial property assets with a significant size, in the core-plus/value-added segment.
Bensimon joins Ardian Real Estate with over 17 years’ experience, most recently at Invesco Real Estate, where she spent five years as head of Transactions in France, Belgium and Southern Europe. Prior to that, she held roles at Carval Investors, part of the Cargill Group, and GE Real Estate Group in Paris.
Petrosino joins Ardian Real Estate with over 25 years’ experience. Before joining Ardian Real Estate he had been Chief Operating Officer at IDeA FIMIT Sgr from 2011. Previously he held a similar role at Pirelli Real Estate having before that been in charge of Italian operations at Morgan Stanley.
Bernd Haggenmüller will join Ardian with over 20 years’ experience, most recently at Shaftesbury Asset Management in Frankfurt, where he was senior managing director Germany (2007-2016). He previously held roles as managing director at Multi Corporation, and Commerz Grundbesitz Group (now Commerz Real) and started his career with ECE Projektmanagement.
Ardian was founded in 1996 and is led by Dominique Senequier. The independent private investment and fund managements company has assets of $50 bn (€46 bn) managed or advised in Europe, North America and Asia.
