Equally, I believe continuation funds will Clients of Ardian Customized Solutions now become an important part of our direct investment benefit from access to Trustview Ardian, the online activities.We are already examining potential investor portal that we launched for our fund opportunities to extend our partnerships with some investors inJuly 2020. Trustview illustrates our of our portfolio companies in this way. Ardian has willingness to innovate in our market, for example an excellent record of identifying and investing in by becoming one of the first private equity firms to companies that can sustain strong, profitable growth offer individual cash flow projections for our LPs. over many years. Where we believe portfolio com- Ardian now provides a world-class, personalized panies have excellent growth prospects beyond digitalexperience, including the ability for LPs to our accustomed holding period, where we have a subscribe to our funds online. Our next objective strong partnership with the management team and is to add a digital dashboard for clients of Ardian our interests are fully aligned with our LPs, we will Customized Solutions, where they will be able to offer them the opportunity to maintain their interest view all their holdings with Ardian and external in the company through a continuation vehicle. managers on a single screen. Different versions of this model are emerging We are responding vigorously to the challen- around the world but the direction of travel is clear: ges that the Covid-19 crisis has created. Our com- longer holding periods for private equity invest- pany is evolving rapidly, and we will be well pre- ments are an important feature of the market of the pared to prosper in the post-pandemic world. We future. They are also entirely consistent with Ardian’s are promoting a younger generation of managers culture of careful, long-term investment, based on into the top ranks of our company and empowering close and trusting partnerships with outstanding these exceptionally talented men and women to management teams. This is a natural next step for help map the next stage of our journey. our company. Our organization has been thoroughly stress- Given Ardian’s scale across multiple private tested during the pandemic. Ardian has come markets and our culture of close and transparent through this test with a renewed sense of strength, relationships with our clients, it is also natural that purpose and social solidarity that we express both providing customized investment solutions will be- through our daily work and the expanding activities come an even more important part of our future. of the Ardian Foundation. This conviction is behind our decision to roll our Mandates activity into a separate business unit, Ardian Customized Solutions, and to offer our full range of services to institutional clients of all sizes. Ardian has come through this test with a renewed sense of strength, purpose and social solidarity. 6 FOREWORD