Mandarine Gestion

Mandarine Gestion

Mandarine Gestion was founded in 2008 by Marc Renaud, the former CIO of CCR Asset Management, alongside a team of senior portfolio managers who had previously worked together at major French institutions. The firm emerged just as Lehman Brothers collapsed, a timing that shaped its conservative, benchmark-agnostic culture. Renaud owns a majority stake, and the partnership structure keeps portfolio managers directly aligned with client outcomes rather than AUM growth targets. The firm manages a focused suite of long-only equity strategies across European and French markets, with a pronounced tilt toward small- and mid-cap companies. Its flagship Mandarine Opportunités fund targets undervalued French small caps, while the Mandarine Europe Microcap strategy extends the same philosophy across the continent. Mandarine also runs dedicated socially responsible investment (SRI) mandates, including the Mandarine Reflex SRI and Mandarine Valeur SRI funds, which apply ESG screens to value-oriented portfolios. The investment process is fundamentally driven, bottom-up, and high-conviction—portfolios typically hold 40 to 60 names with low turnover. The team emphasizes direct company meetings, conducting hundreds of management interviews annually across France, Germany, Italy, and the Benelux region. As of the most recent public filings, the firm operates from a single office in Paris, with a tight-knit team that has experienced low senior turnover since inception. Mandarine does not disclose total AUM, though French regulatory filings and press reports have placed its assets under management in the range of €1.5 billion to €3 billion historically. The firm's leadership remains anchored by Renaud, with portfolio managers including Adrien Dumas, Diane Bruno, and Yohan Salleron running their respective sleeves with significant autonomy. In July 2024, Mandarine Gestion announced the appointment of a new head of institutional business development, signaling an effort to deepen relationships with French pension funds and insurers beyond its traditional wholesale base. The firm's structural differentiator is its boutique independence in an industry segment where most comparable French small-cap managers have been acquired or shuttered. Mandarine remains one of only a handful of employee-owned specialists still dedicated exclusively to European small-mid equity. Unlike platforms that have layered on private assets or expanded into multi-boutique structures, Mandarine has resisted diversification for its own sake, maintaining a pure-play equity culture that institutional allocators seeking uncorrelated European small-cap exposure find difficult to replicate at scale.