Dominique Senequier

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2976

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"No matter what you are currently able to do, creativity can make you capable of more." (John C. Maxwell)

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K@W did an interview with AXA's Dominique Senequier which was published on April 6th. She is on the Forbes list of the world's 100 most powerful women. She is the founder and CEO of Paris-based AXA Private Equity which she founded in 1996. She's currently busy buying up investment portfolios from Bank of America and Citigroup.

Her perspective on the "Eurozone" and Private Equity performance is worth noting:

Eurozone - everyone is over-focused on Greece. Greece is only 2% of the Eurozone. Even if Greece and Portugal both had problems, it wouldn't change life in the Eurozone. In Spain, the problem is not the government and not the debts of the government. The problem is the banking system and that's being cleaned up. Ultimately, the required harmony of budget and tax discipline within the Eurozone, which would have taken 20 years, has been accelerated by this crisis and will happen now. Senequier sees the U.S. as having a lot of debt but the U.S. can print money so no near term problem.

Private Equity Performance - in answer to the query by K@W about how private equity will measure up to public market performance over the next few years, Senequier said it was difficult to project. Over the last 25 years, the PE index has been at 12.6% while the Dow has been at 10.4%. If she looks at three years, it's 7.3% for PE and 3.2% for the Dow. She sees this type of performance comparison continuing in the U.S. Her perspective on her own portfolio companies is that she is first focused on the "quality of managers." When she acquires companies, she looks at the human values. That makes her special and her PE firm hard to beat.