Green Industry Act | Alexis Dupont, Managing Director, France Invest

Interview with Alexis Dupont, Managing Director of France Invest

By encouraging French savers to allocate part of their savings to non-listed assets through the Green Industry Act, the public authorities are pursuing a number of objectives. "The aim is to combine the interests of financing the economy, re-industrialisation and environmental transition with those of savers, who expect a good return on their savings. Until recently, this asset class was reserved for wealthy individuals, family offices and entrepreneurs, so there was this issue of accessibility", observes Alexis Dupont, Managing Director of France Invest. Several initiatives have been taken at French and European level. "The Pacte Act initiated the movement in France in 2019, but the Green Industry Act extends it much further, through life insurance and retirement savings, and the phenomenon will accelerate with the implementation of the ELTIF regulation and the increasing appearance of ELTIF funds at European level," adds Alexis Dupont.

A variety of underlying strategies

Against this backdrop, France Invest carried out an initial study in 2024 to take stock of the offering available to investors. "The non-listed offer is relatively young. It is around three and a half years old and will gradually consolidate. It is distinguished by the diversity of the underlying strategies, with not only private equity, but also private debt, infrastructure and secondary. A significant proportion of funds are "evergreen", which means they can address the issues of balancing liquidity and building performance over time for investors. What's more, even though we need to be cautious, as this is a fairly young offering, the initial returns we are seeing are relatively encouraging," observes the Managing Director of France Invest. So for Alexis Dupont, "the novelty of this market that is emerging before our eyes is that it is being built to support the institutional market, to mirror it, in order to provide access to the best of institutional management, in products that also meet investors' expectations, particularly in terms of liquidity".

The mobilisation of the market to build products is well underway

With this in mind, the key to success is "mobilising the market to build products, which is well under way, and mobilising distribution networks, which have to meet the technical challenges of adapting their information systems and liquidity, which are progressing rapidly", says Alexis Dupont.

A huge educational challenge

Finally, the Managing Director of France Invest points out that all the players involved have to tackle "a huge educational challenge, to explain this asset class, which may appear more complex than others, beyond its immediate, tangible impact on the economy".Under these conditions, "this asset class will continue to develop gradually, slowly but surely, and will be a real 'game changer' for the financing of our economy", says Alexis Dupont.