Ardian, a global private investment firm, today announces that it has arranged a unitranche facility to support the LBO acquisition of Rhétorès Group (“Rhétorès” or “the Group”) by IK Partners (“IK”), alongside the founders, the management team and Activa, all of whom have significantly reinvested as part of the transaction. The financing package also includes a sizeable committed line to support the Group’s active acquisition strategy.

Rhétorès is a fast-growing French independent financial advisor. Founded in 2010 by Stéphane Rudzinski and Grégory Soudjoukdjian, the Group provides a comprehensive range of financial savings and investment products, including life-insurance wrappers and access to premium asset classes including private equity, real estate and structured products.

Rhétorès focuses on high-net-worth individuals and serves a diversified client base of more than 6,200, representing over €2.7bn in assets under management as of the end of 2025.

Since inception, Rhétorès has achieved strong organic growth and, following Activa’s investment in 2022, it has accelerated its inorganic growth strategy with 20 add-on acquisitions completed to date. Notably, the Group’s acquisition of Dauphine AM in 2023 enabled complementary asset management activity and provided access to an internal distribution platform for high value-added financial products.

“We are delighted to partner with IK as our new majority shareholder and Ardian as our financing partner. Their proven investment experience in the wealth management space will enable us to accelerate our development. We are eager to enter this next phase of growth through further organic development and buy-and-build activity to drive consolidation and diversify our offering.” Stéphane Rudzinski & Grégory Soudjoukdjian, co-founders of rhétorès Group

“The French financial savings market is both large and resilient, supported by strong underlying trends and a favourable regulatory environment. Under Stéphane and Grégory’s leadership, Rhétorès has achieved remarkable success and earned a strong reputation within the French IFA landscape. We look forward to working closely with the team to support their ambitious growth strategy, including further consolidation and diversification of their service offering.” Rémi Buttiaux & Diki Korniloff, Partners, IK Partners

“We are delighted to be able to leverage our deep sector expertise to support Rhétorès, IK Partners and Activa as they embark on this pivotal chapter of growth. The Group has built an exceptional track record to date. We are confident that this partnership will help drive long term value creation and continued expansion.” Gregory Pernot, Co-Head Private Credit France, Ardian

With over two decades of experience, the Private Credit activity at Ardian is among Europe’s most established players, applying a multi local approach to partner with private equity sponsors and management teams in advancing the growth of high quality companies. This transaction adds to Private Credit’s track record of successful investments and reflects a period of strong investment activity for the team.