THIERRY DEAU’S ENGINEERING training in France led him early in his career to building government-funded infrastructure.
But it was his entrepreneur father back home in Martinique who inspired him to strike out on his own in 2005. He started Paris-based Meridiam to finance, build, and manage long-term projects. Now, with €7 billion ($7.83 billion) in seven funds and nine offices across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America, Meridiam is playing a key role in high-profile projects such as the upgrade of New York’s LaGuardia Airport and a road tunnel under the Port of Miami. Déau describes Meridiam’s investment approach in an interview with Bloomberg Markets.
SREE BHAKTAVATSALAM: What led you to start Meridiam?
THIERRY DEAU: First of all, I am an engineer. I still don’t define myself as a financier. I think finance is a means to produce other things. In the first part of my career, I actually built things and invested for governments and the French development banks. It was about how you invest to create better service and how do you maintain that in the long term. Clearly that triggered for me the need for an investment that is much longer than the typical private equity investment. So [that led to] creating a 25-year fund to really think about optimizing the investment and the infrastructure over the long run.
SB: What’s involved in thinking about a 25-year investment?
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