Mermoz Participations

The founding trio — David Jomain (Président), Lauriane Genoud (Directrice Générale), and Pierre Jourdain (Associé Fondateur) — leads all investment activities. Jomain’s background is in SME banking and operational regional management at SOMUDIMEC and RDD. Jourdain spent nearly 30 years in industrial minority-stake investing and board-level roles at Rhône Dauphiné Développement. Genoud joined Mermoz in 2018 after an SME banking career and now oversees operational strategy and HR integration at portfolio companies.

Sourcing runs through regional proximity and a dedicated leasing unit. The firm maintains offices in Lyon, Saint-Étienne, and Annecy, and its partners sit inside the industrial ecosystems of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. The leasing arm, led by Vincent Charmet, provides asset financing to industrial SMEs, creating an early-window view of capital needs before a full equity transaction or succession event arises.

No. Mermoz uses a club-deal structure, raising capital on a deal-by-deal basis from a private network of regional subscribers. It does not disclose a formal fund series, target sizes, or limited-partner reporting cycles — the model is closer to a deal-syndication collective than to a regulated GP managing closed-end funds.

The firm targets buyout and growth-stage investments in small and mid-sized industrial enterprises. Its mandate spans majority and minority stakes, and it explicitly structures succession (transmission) deals for owner-operators preparing to exit. The in-house leasing capability can also function as a lighter-touch, earlier-stage capital entry point.

The leasing unit sits inside the same legal group and serves as both a standalone financing product and an origination channel. Industrial SMEs that use Mermoz for equipment or asset leasing frequently surface later-stage equity or succession needs, giving the firm a proprietary sourcing advantage in its core regions.