Damien Bachelot was a co-founder of Aforge Finance in 1995 and heads its Corporate business. He is also a member of the board of the Bank Degroof Group (Belgium) and PrivatBank (Spain). Prior to his entrepreneurial career, he was Chief Executive of Ecofinance France before co-founding Ernst & Young’s Corporate Finance department, which he ran for five years.

Over some fifteen years he has conducted more than a hundred transactions, advising family and industrial groups including De Dietrich, Taittinger, Albert Frère and Editions Francis Le-fèbvre. He has also acted for major groups such as Le Monde, Gianfranco Ferré and Ca-nal+/EMAP. In addition, he has advised numerous investment funds on both sales and acqui-sitions. Damien Bachelot has worked in the majority of business sectors but has particular expertise in Publishing and Luxury.

René-Pierre Azria heads up Aforge Finance USA, a joint venture between Aforge and Tegris LLC, a mergers & acquisitions advisory firm based in New York and formed by him in 2007 and of which he is President and CEO.

Before founding Tegris, René-Pierre Azria was a Rothschild Global Partner and in charge of Rothschild’s Telecom practice in the United States. Prior to this, he was Chief Executive of Blackstone Indosuez and President of Financial Indosuez Inc. in New York. René-Pierre be-gan his career at the bank in 1981 in Tokyo.

In 28 years of Corporate Finance work in North America, Asia and Europe, René-Pierre Azria has amassed vast experience, advising in most cases on highly complex, large-scale deals.

René-Pierre Azria is a member of the board of Jarden Corporation (listed on the New York Stock Exchange), Phoenix Group (listed on the London Stock Exchange) and La Martinière publishing group.

An alumnus of HEC, René-Pierre Azria is also a graduate of London Business School and Stern Graduate School at New York University. In June 2010, he was awarded the prestigious Herbert Lehman prize by the American Jewish Committee.

Bertrand Manet, age 52, is a managing partner of Aforge Finance.

Having gained a master’s degree in management from IAE business management institute in Paris and the University of Lyon-III, plus a DESS postgraduate degree in banking and fi-nance, he began his career in 1983 as an account manager for SME infrastructure loans in Lyon before going on to become associate general manager of Acti Conseil, a company he formed in 1988.

In 1995, he founded BM Conseil, a consultancy specializing in mergers & acquisitions, of which he became Chairman and CEO before joining Ernst & Young’s Corporate Finance de-partment in Lyon as a Partner.

In 2005, Bertrand Manet joined Aforge Finance with his entire team to create and head up our office in Lyon.

Elisabeth Amiel, age 41, a certified public accountant with a postgraduate degree in finance from the University of Paris Dauphine, joined Aforge Finance in 2005.

After holding a post as Senior Manager in Ernst & Young’s Corporate Finance department for six years, she joined the Corporate Finance department of Arthur Andersen where she served as Director for six years.

Elisabeth has been a specialist in mergers & acquisitions, valuation work and special situa-tions for fifteen or so years.

She has advised numerous shareholders in connection with mergers and acquisitions. Some examples:

• Advice on sales for shareholders who are private individuals: Aurenis (sold to LFPI), LCD (medical test laboratories)
• Advice on investment fund sales: Industries & Finances (sale of Armatis to CIC LBO), Caravelle (sale of Fruehauf to MBO)
• Advice on investment fund acquisition: Towerbrook (GSE and Autodistribution), Banexi (Lampes Berger)
• Sales of distressed companies: Navimo, Camif, Créatifs

Lawrence Giesen is a managing partner at Aforge and is particularly active in cross-border transactions and private equity fund advisory services, notably with regard to their canvassing for investors.

An American with French nationality and a graduate of Georgetown University, Lawrence Giesen is a specialist in mergers and acquisitions and private equity. During his career he has also developed in-depth knowledge of the media and telecoms.

After starting out in 1980 at Mellon Bank, he joined Kidder Peabody in 1986. In 1990, he became a member of the management team at Time Warner. In 1993, Lawrence Giesen took charge of the media-telecoms sector in Europe at Paribas. In 2000, he joined Lehman Brothers in London as a senior banker for media/telecoms and private equity. In 2007, he went to Bank of America as a managing director in charge of private equity.

Most notably, Lawrence Giesen has worked for, among others, the funds P.A.I, Blackstone, Permira, Bain, Providence, and many others

Aged 46, Pierre Albouy (IEP-Paris, Harvard Business School, DEA postgraduate degree in political economy) started out with Arthur Andersen. He joined the M&A department of Paribas in Paris in 1990. In 1993 he joined Bankers Trust as Vice-President, Corporate Fi-nance in Paris, later going to New York in 1996 as Principal.

In 1998, he became a Director, and later Managing Director at Rothschild in New York, spe-cializing in cross-border transactions and heading up the Healthcare department. In 2010, Pi-erre Albouy was appointed Head of Investment Banking at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Paris and member of the RBS France Executive Committee and the global M&A department.

Pierre Albouy has handled a large number of deals. He has, most notably, advised GlaxoS-mithKline (“GSK”) in its acquisition of IDB Biomedical, Steinhoff International in its buy-out of Conforama, Essilor in buying out the US group FGX. He also advised Butler Capital for the sale of Disguise to Jakks Pacific. He was responsible for the sale of World Flight Services to LBO France, of Swissport to Ferrovial, Orangina to Cadbury Schweppes and the acquisi-tion of Oxygen Media by LVMH.

Pierre Albouy sits on the boards of Minachem, French American Foundation NY and Planet Finance. He is also co-author of a collective work: “De qui demain sera t-il fait?” (Who are tomorrow’s people?) published by Institut Aspen.

Frédéric Antolin, 43, a graduate of École Centrale Paris, has nearly 20 years’ experience in senior management advisory for strategy and mergers & acquisitions. He is in charge of business development for the Aforge Finance Group.

He began his career as a strategy consultant for the international consultancy Mars & Co, and was notably involved in work in the oil, banking and industrial components sectors. Subsequently, he became Director of Strategy for the Legris Industries group. He then went on to found an independent strategy and development consultancy.

Frédéric Antolin joined Aforge Finance in 2001. He has acted as an advisor for venture capi-tal funds and their holdings, as well as for industrial groups such as De Dietrich, Legris, IMS (Industrie Metal Services).

Aged 38, a graduate of University of Paris Dauphine with more than 10 years’ mergers and acquisitions experience to her credit, Céline Lagniez came to Aforge Finance in 2008.

She began her professional career in Ernst & Young’s audit department before going on to work in the Mergers & Acquisitions departments of Deloitte and Natexis. She then joined Valeo group’s Strategic Operations Management.

Over the last five years at Valeo Céline Lagniez has notably conducted numerous interna-tional transactions including global divestment of non-strategic assets and the negotiation of joint ventures in Asia. She has also advised Aforge on the sale of companies in the specialist retail (Christian Liaigre), industrial (Gimaex) and service (education and training) sectors.

Didier Lenz, 45, is a Partner at Aforge Finance, which he joined in March 2007, after ten years in M&A advisory in Luxembourg (Sofinal, followed by M&A Partners) and six years in CIC group (2001-2007).

He has advised on approximately 80 deals in very many sectors of business (agrifood, con-struction and public works, housing fixtures and fittings, manufacture of capital goods for industry, real estate, etc.) in many cases involving family firms: Fondis Electronic, Eurométal, Groupe Orth, Sirr Ingénierie, among others

Fabienne Saugier, 42, a graduate of HEC (1991) and holder of a degree in philosophy, is a Partner at Aforge Finance.

In 1992, she co-founded Arcandes, a consultancy in the audio-visual field, before joining the Havas/Vivendi group early in 1996 (as chief financial and legal officer of HEE/Interactive and the ISP Havas On Line, and later director of e-business for the Expansion press group). At the end of 1998, with in-depth knowledge of digital businesses under her belt, she took over strategy management for the Encyclopaedia Universalis family group, at that time un-dergoing radical change.

Co-opted in early 2001 as a Partner in the Republic Alley seed investment fund, she took over the general management of one of its holdings and guided the turn-around and subsequent sale of Publibook Editions in 2004.

Backed by more than ten years’ experience of the TMT sector, in 2005 she co-founded a mergers & acquisitions consultancy specializing in this area before coming to Aforge in 2008.

Sectors covered: Information Services, Business Services, Marketing Services, Media & Non-Media (Events, Direct Marketing) Communications, Distance Sales and E-commerce, Technology.

Yaël Sitbon, 34, who holds a senior professional diploma in Finance, joined Aforge Finance in 2005.

Yaël spent three years in Deloitte’s Corporate Finance department before starting his own consultancy advising on M&A strategy in 2002. The consultancy specialized in mergers & acquisitions for over eleven years, contributing to numerous deals, especially in specialist retail, luxury (Jimmy Choo, Cobrason, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Camif, among others) and services (Créatifs, Eléphant & Cie, IB Group, etc.).

Aged 36, Lamia El Fahli joined Aforge Finance in 2005. Previously, she was part of audit and transactions services teams at Arthur Andersen/Ernst & Young where she started in 1999.

Within the last 6 years, she has worked on numerous M&A transactions in Healthcare, B2B, Media and Retail, of which:

• Advice on sales for private individuals shareholders: LCD (medical test laboratories), Negma Lerads (Pharmaceutical Company), Vecteur Plus (media).
• Advice on investment funds: Towerbrook (InfoPro Communications, Autodistribution), Perfectis (Ekis), Duke Street (Navimo), ING Parcom (Unither Pharmaceuticals).
• Advice on industrial companies: (Groupe 3Suisses International).