Ardian, a world leading private investment house, has entered into a partnership with iCapital, the leading global fintech platform driving access and efficiency in alternative investing for the asset and wealth management industries, to provide wealth managers with access to Ardian’s private market investment strategies. Notably, iCapital products created as a result of this partnership will be available through Allfunds, one of the world’s leading B2B WealthTech platforms.

Ardian will leverage iCapital’s technology platform and structuring solutions to provide wealth managers and their clients with access to Ardian’s deep private markets expertise and suite of alternative investment strategies, based on its global network of 15 offices in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Ardian’s alternative investment strategies spanning Private Equity, Real Assets and Private Credit, will be available to wealth managers.

Private Wealth has always been an important part of Ardian’s investor base. Today, this segment represents more than $8.3 billion of AuM and over 600 investors. Over the past three years and following the launch of its Private Wealth Solutions unit, Ardian has been developing new ways to give private clients and wealth managers greater access to private market assets.

With more than $141 billion in alternative assets under management and long-standing experience as a private investment house, Ardian’s partnership with iCapital comes amid a surging interest in alternative investing from the global wealth management community and their clients, who have historically had more limited access to appropriately structured alternative investing opportunities. These investors are also increasingly prioritising ESG when making their investment decisions. Ardian has been developing its approach to responsible investment for over 10 years, notably through its annual Secondaries portfolio ESG monitoring. Ardian’s objective is to amplify its impact by assessing GP’s practices and actively engaging with them to improve ESG integration in private investments.

“In 2020, we launched our Private Wealth Solutions initiative based on our conviction that alternative investment opportunities should be accessible to wealth managers and their private clients around the world. Joining forces with iCapital ensures that wealth managers can now seamlessly access our broad expertise in Private Equity, Real Assets and Private Credit investing. Through this partnership, we are combining iCapital’s innovative technology platform with our long-standing commitment to meet the evolving demands of the global wealth management community, to bring a leading solution to wealth managers and help their clients achieve their investment goals.” Erwan Paugam, Head of Private Wealth Solutions and Managing Director at Ardian

“Our mission is to solve the fundamental challenges of investing in private markets for wealth managers and their private clients. iCapital’s solutions help asset managers and wealth managers facilitate their clients’ access to the growth and diversification opportunities of private markets. This partnership represents another important milestone in our global expansion. We are very pleased to support Ardian’s commitment to bring attractive alternative investment opportunities to the wealth management channel globally and to help advisors and their clients achieve their investment objectives.” Marco Bizzozero, Head of International at iCapital

Ardian, a world leading private investment house, has significantly reinvested in Uptoo, a leading player specializing in recruitment, consulting and training of salespeople. The objective of this reinvestment is to support Uptoo’s growth and diversification of its activities. As part of this transaction, Uptoo’s managers will remain majority shareholders of the company.

The company, founded in 2005, aims to become the leading partner for supporting sales enablement of companies in France. Since Ardian Growth’s initial investment in 2019, Uptoo has largely outperformed the market, with growth exceeding expectations, and showing resilience throughout the Covid-19 crisis. The company has increased its turnover fourfold since 2015, which is now expected to exceed €30M this year. The company has more than doubled its workforce, from 110 employees in 2019 to 250 today. Uptoo has also developed a fully integrated and highly digitalized consulting and training offer over the past three years.

Uptoo now has more than 7,000 clients, including SMBs, start-ups and large enterprises (public companies). Uptoo helps them strengthen their sales organization through the recruitment and training of sales staff and the modernization of sales methods and tools, therefore significantly and rapidly improving their market positions.

“We are very proud to have supported Uptoo in its development over the last three years and are delighted to continue our collaboration with the company’s high quality management team as we pursue further growth. The sales enablement market has a significant growth potential and Uptoo is one of the best positioned to benefit from it. The quality of its teams, strategy, process and digital tools offers Uptoo’s clients a more than ever needed competitive advantage, indistinctively of their sector or profile.” Frederic Quéru, Managing Director within the Ardian Growth Team

“With Ardian’s support, our ambition is to become the market leader in France. Uptoo’s strong performance to-date demonstrated the growth potential in the sales enablement market, which has not yet been fully digitalised. Companies can unlock this growth by recruiting the best talents to boost sales, training and developing the skills of its sales teams over time, establishing or rethinking sales methods and tools, all while using the potential of digital. This new fundraising will give us the resources to continue to develop and to capitalize on our unique digital platform, which allows a real time connection between our consultants, clients and the best sales and management talents.” Didier Perraudin, Founder and CEO, Uptoo