Meet the Incoming CEO of Europe’s Largest Asset Manager

Yves Perrier, who over the last decade built Amundi into Europe’s largest fund manager, will step down as CEO in May, the firm announced Wednesday.

The firm revealed the news at the same time it unveiled its fourth quarter and 2020financial resultson Wednesday morning. The Paris-based asset manager said Perrier would continue to serve as CEO until the after firm’s annual general meeting on May 10, when he will become the chairman of Amundi’s board of directors.

Valérie Baudson, a member of the firm’s general management committee and chief executive of Amundi subsidiary CPR AM, will succeed Perrier as CEO, Amundi said.

“Amundi has a clear strategy that has been unchanged since the company was founded: remaining an efficient organization with talented and tight-knit management,” Perrier said in a statement. “I am pleased that Valérie Baudson has been chosen by the board, because I have complete confidence in her ability to continue and amplify Amundi’s development trajectory.”

Baudson is a long-time employee of Amundi and its parent company Crédit Agricole Group, having started at the bank’s European brokerage subsidiary Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux in 1999. She worked at Cheuvereux for nine years, including as the firm’s European head of marketing, before joining the asset management unit that would become Amundi in 2008, according to herLinkedIn profile.

At Amundi, Baudson created and developed the firm’s exchange-traded fund, indexing, and smart beta business, which she continues to supervise today, according to herbioon the firm’s website. Amundi’s passive, ETF, and smart beta assets totaled €158 billion ($191.6 billion) at the end of 2020, after annual net inflows of €21.6 billion, according to the announcement.

In 2013, Baudson was appointed to Amundi’s executive committee. She joined the firm’s general management committee in 2016, the same year she was named CEO of active manager CPR AM.

Baudson also heads up Amundi’s third-party distribution and private banking clients division, and supervises the asset manager’s subsidiaries in Germany and Spain.

As the incoming CEO, Baudson will oversee one of the world’s largest fund managers, with €1.73 trillion in assets under management as of December 31. She will be only the second CEO since the creation of Amundi through the merger of Crédit Agricole’s and Société Générale’s asset management units in 2009.

According to annual results announced on Wednesday, Amundi’s net revenues fell 4.1 percent in 2020, as the market downturn hurt management fees and financial income. Amundi also recorded outflows of €4 billion in the first half of 2020, but these were more than offset by €49 billion in net inflows in the second half of the year.

“In 2020, Amundi once again demonstrated the strength of its business model through its economic and financial performance,” Perrier said.