Stephanie Bensimon:

The structure of the market is quite different because the cities are different in the way they have been evolving. You have also to consider that the structure of the economy in Europe is slightly different from the US as well because we have less tech company, so most of the companies, you have to go back to work, it's not like everybody works from distance, it really depends from one company to another. So COVID did change the way of working because everybody had remote working policy, things like this, flexible work basically. But frankly, in most of the continental city, except London that is maybe between Europe and the US in terms of trends, I would say most of the people returned to the office.

Nancy Lashine:

Hello, and thanks for tuning into Real Estate Capital, I'm your host, Nancy Lashine of Park Madison Partners. Park Madison is a capital solutions and advisory firm serving the global institutional real estate business. Capital is the lifeblood of the real estate industry, but the decisions on where and how it's allocated are driven by people and personalities. Who are they? What motivates them? What have been their biggest successes and lessons learned throughout their careers? On this show, we introduce you to some of the real estate industry's most influential thought leaders and decision makers, and we talk about what is important to them, how they make critical decisions, who has influenced them, and a lot more.

Today's episode features Stephanie Bensimon, head of real estate at Ardian. Ardian is one of the largest private equity firms in Europe with over 160 billion of AUM and secondaries, private equity, credit, and real assets. The firm began as part of AXA before going independent through a management buyout in 2013 led by Dominique Senequier. Stephanie was hired in 2016 to start Ardian's real estate vertical, which now has 25 employees and is based in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, and Madrid, and has over 2 billion of assets under management. Before Ardian, Stephanie spent 17 years at several well-known institutional real estate firms, including Invesco, Carval, and GE.

We discuss Stephanie's career path, Ardian's strategies for growing the platform, and the different risk preferences between the US and European investors. Interestingly, Ardian's main real estate investment focus is office, which is a strategy from which Ardian hasn't deviated even in the wake of COVID. So we dive into European office fundamentals and how they differ from what we're seeing in the US. Our conversation begins with Stephanie telling us about the early days of her real estate career at GE.

Thank you so much for joining us, Stephanie, we are super excited to have you. I think this is the first podcast we've done with someone who's resident in Europe and you're in my favorite city in the world, in Paris. So tell us a little bit about you, how you got to this seat, where were you born, a little bit about your family and how you ended up in real estate?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yes, thank you for having me, Nancy. Yes, I'm actually based in Paris, so I'm French, and I am actually living in Paris since I'm six years old, but I'm not born in Paris, I'm actually born in Morocco where my family came from. Which is always something very important in my story because obviously it gave me some kind of culture all around the world and something that I do like today, which is really discovering new countries and new culture. So Paris was, for me, really a chance because it was really the place where I could grow as a person with my family, but the country of culture as well, so for me, it was something that was really important in my life. I come from a big family because my parents had eight kids, so it's quite a mess when you think about it, but it's actually-

Nancy Lashine:

I'm thinking about your mom, what a star she must be.

Stephanie Bensimon:

... Yeah, I'm still very ... for me, my mom is like, I'm crazy, when I think about her, I think really she did something extraordinary, especially because she raised us, my father was also serving the French foreign region when he was young, so he gave us also the discipline, the integrity. So when we grew up in a big family with a lot of, I would say, values around how we should work in the future, how we should grow,\. And actually when you see all my brothers and sisters, I'm feeling very proud today that we did something very different from one to the other, but you can see the values, which is hard work, integrity and everything, which actually is something that I found and I also today try to transmit to my children as well. So it's something very strong that came from my family.

And actually, when I did my study in Paris, which was more like on finance, with schools, I didn't really think about real estate, which is something that you can really see in many cases for real estate people, sometimes they don't realize, and actually I'd never realized that real estate could be something where I could really be passionate about and grow. But I started my study, when I did finance, I knew that I wanted to do something that was more on the more concrete in the real life in a way, so I felt that. Especially when my friends wanted to be traders and everything, so I thought, no, this is not for me, I want something that is really concrete. And I had the big chance, which was to start to work for GE at that time, GE Capital, which was establishing their headquarter for Europe in Paris because I remember one of the big boss was loving Paris, and he saw that Paris could be the headquarter for Europe and not London as many other investors, and that's how I-

Nancy Lashine:

He was prescient. This was all before Brexit, long before.

Stephanie Bensimon:

... Exactly. It was actually at the end of the nineties, so sometime ago now. And this is where I really discovered by thinking I will do something that is more like finance job, and in fact it was developing the different platform across Europe for GE. I was an analyst and I found this really amazing to discover different countries, how to look at real estate from the financial angle as well, which was, for me, a way to see something concrete but with a new way of doing things, especially in Europe. Because at the end of the nineties, it was after the crisis when the Americans came to invest massively in Europe with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. So I was really at the beginning of all of this with the change of doing things in the way real estate was operating in Europe.

It was a big shift for the industry and I was part of it discovering how you can price deals, how you can discover also how different it can be from one city to another, especially Europe versus US. As we were always reporting to the US, it was always very funny how you try to compare markets that are completely different because just the society and the way people live in the city are very different. And so this was also very interesting to see from the very beginning because it's still today a big topic on how the different segments of the market are changing and how it is different from one continent to another.

Then to be honest, when I started to discover real estate, I couldn't do something else, actually for me it was really the industry where I found the most opportunities for me to grow and also as a job to develop myself. So then I spent a lot of time at GE doing different things in real estate. I think that's also something I'm very grateful about, especially with regard to the US way of doing things, was that I was quite young and I was very young because of the spirit about team working, less of a hierarchy to be able very quickly to work directly with the CEO, for example, where I was able very young. Frankly, when I think about it now, I was working on different projects, for example, I was a Six Sigma leader for the CEO of Europe at that time, which was all the things that you can do in this type of company that you cannot, I'm sure at that time I couldn't do in the typical French company.

Then actually, I moved and continue into the different part of the industry, always in investment management, so always doing investment asset management, discovering different sectors from the big listed company, big portfolio to more granular when I was at Cargill doing more very opportunistic and logistic residential and offices. And I continued my journey actually across the different organization every time to learn something different in the way of working because it's true that when you start working for a big company, you think you have the culture that is completely in you and you think, am I thinking really my way or how can I have enough distance to what I'm doing?

Actually, I had the chance to work for GE and then Cargill, and then I moved to Invesco, which was also a US company, very different from Cargill or from GE because very different in terms of type of clients, which were from all over the world, but also working not just for US clients, but also for German clients and European clients. Which I think is also something very interesting when you start to work with investors from all over the world, how they see investment, how they see the different risk profile and what they're expecting from GPs to really do for them and what type of SIEM and risk profile they want to have. And actually, Ardian who's now running the real estate activity is actually my first French company.

Nancy Lashine:

It took you about 20 years, right?

Stephanie Bensimon:

After 20 years. Yes, and they are richer.

Nancy Lashine:

But Ardian is quite unusual in that respect because it was founded by a woman, Dominique Senequier, who bought the business out of AXA. There's probably not many finance firms in France run by a woman, does that make it feel different or?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Well, it's like an amazing story and Dominique is really an amazing person who has done something really extraordinary when you think about it. She founded when she was part of AXA Private Equity, and AXA Private Equity was managing all the private equity, it was a model that was not just founded with AXA as an investor, but always with third party money, and it was in 1996. And then at some point, AXA decided to sell, it was 10 years ago because we celebrated our 10 years anniversary, she managed to do a management buyout by the employee of the company, and the company, since it became independent, grew from 30 billion under management to today we are managing 160 billion.

Nancy Lashine:

Unbelievable.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Being like the biggest private equity or investment firm in Europe, and really with a great potential to grow, especially in the US and in other countries where we think we have a lot still to expand. So it's actually an extraordinary journey and also, of course, I'm very proud to work with Dominique as a woman because she's probably the most impressive woman I've met in my life frankly, professionally. She's really incredibly smart, but also how she was able to have all the employee participating, which is also a model that works very well and it's quite unique.

Nancy Lashine:

When you say participating, you mean participating in the equity ownership of the business?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yeah.

Nancy Lashine:

Explain that a little bit, what does that mean?

Stephanie Bensimon:

When the management buyout happened, more than 80% of the employee was investors. And today, even though we've grown, you have probably more than 70% of the employee that are shareholders of the company, and actually the capital is-

Nancy Lashine:

Employees, do they buy their shares or are they granted their shares? How does that work?

Stephanie Bensimon:

... It's both actually, you can either. Of course we have program on shares and we also have sometimes the opportunity to sell and buy shares, which most of the employee are enjoying doing because they feel really the incredible growth that happened, but also that is in front of us. So this is really a matter that is quite unique that such a big company like this is owned more than 50% by the employee, and that's something about how Dominique very early saw that by sharing the ownership, it will be very powerful for development of the company. And it effectively is because you can feel within the DNA of the group how people feel very committed to the group and to the way we are growing.

Nancy Lashine:

How did the company get enough capital just to continue to expand if it was largely employee owned? Because typically, that's why people bring it outside investors.

Stephanie Bensimon:

You are right, at some point some scale, but so far, thanks to investors that we have, we were able to expand and we were able to expand organically most of the time. This is model that we have chosen, but in fact as we are growing and growing, obviously doing something that is not organic is also an option. For example, on real estate, as we came late, because as you can imagine, we developed an investment house with private equities, secondaries infrastructures, but since we were part of AXA, real estate was not part of the game as AXA had a big business at that time still. And so when we became independent, that's how I came in and we started to develop real estate activity, which was actually seven years ago. So we, today, are the smallest business within our job, but the business that has the more potential, I would say. [inaudible 00:14:39].

Nancy Lashine:

The fastest growth trajectory.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Exactly.

Nancy Lashine:

When I think about Ardian as a huge PE shop, one of the things that you're really known for is the secondary business.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yes.

Nancy Lashine:

On the real estate side, are you mostly primaries, exclusively primaries, and how does the secondary gestalt mentality fit in with what you're doing, if at all?

Stephanie Bensimon:

No, definitely, I think we started the firm as direct buyout, that's really the core activity, and secondaries came after and then we had the infra developing. And I think there are different ways it works together because today part of the 160 billion, we have probably more than 80 that is secondary, so it's a huge business for us as we are probably one of the biggest even in the world. But secondaries works also with firmness in a way because you have to have the strong expertise as well, so it relies also on the fact that we have a strong expertise in the different sectors, which is buyout, expansion, but also infra.

What we have seen in secondaries is, we were bigger and bigger, and so this is also helping us to have a more dominant position and also having data enough to become really a leader and having access to the big portfolios as well, especially from some of our LPs. But for me, it's very complimentary because as secondaries is also developing more on the sector basis like secondary infra, secondary more buyout, we'll definitely look at secondary real estate as being one of the avenue for developing the real estate activity, and this is really something that we are looking to do, especially-

Nancy Lashine:

Have you done it yet or is this something in the planning stage?

Stephanie Bensimon:

... Not yet, this is really something we're discussing also internally with Mark Benedetti who is our president out of COMEX today, that is actually based in the US based in New York, and he's also the co-head of secondaries, but also the president of the executive committee of Ardian. And so this is really something that we will definitely look at, especially in the US as we have a big business of secondaries in the US, so this is something that we will really want to do in the coming months as something as an avenue to grow.

Nancy Lashine:

As you look at that business, because obviously active in that business as well on the agency side, what we've seen is far fewer LP secondaries just because the bid ask spread is so great and, well, by definition, appraisals lag every other market. And if you look across all the different property types, whether it's venture PE or even infra, because the real estate values are done on appraisals, there's the biggest bid ask spread.

And so it's really hard to do an LP secondary today because nobody trusts the marks. But there's so much opportunity for GP led secondaries or restructurings, a combination of, it's hard to sell an asset today, so you may need to hold an asset longer than fund life because it's really hard to find financing so it's hard to refinance an asset with debt so maybe you decide to recap it with equity. And for a host of other reasons, we're seeing a lot more GP secondary interest, how are you seeing that today?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Look, I think you're probably right on the valuation, we're still behind, we're still waiting to get some good discount. Generally, the way we are looking at secondaries when we discuss with LP is also a way not necessarily to buy at a big discount, but also to buy very qualitative portfolio because they have reason to have different allocation or exposure. So a lot of portfolios that we bought on other sectors was also because LPs wanted to have different exposure in terms of asset class, in terms of exposure to the different vintage as well.

I think there is something to do around this, especially when it comes to the qualitative portfolio that are potentially correctly valued, so this is something that definitely we'll want to look at. And then on the GP side, it really depends on what opportunities, how we can manage it since we need to operate in the same way we do things in Europe. So that's something, given the market and given the opportunity, we could definitely have an interest going forward.

And then of course as we are thinking about expanding the US, definitely buying also a manager or expanding through acquisition is also a viable option that we could look at as we want to accelerate the growth. So this is also something, it's always very complicated because as you have the culture, the DNA, you want to make sure that you integrate very smoothly and in your team. But US market is a very mature market, very competitive as well, so it's also very hard to start organically something.

Nancy Lashine:

That's our business, we know that extremely well. We probably do one new fund, really help launch one emerging manager every year or two. And it is of course threading a needle, it's harder and harder to do it. We've been fortunate we've done it 14 times, but it's not easy to do.

Stephanie Bensimon:

No, it's not.

Nancy Lashine:

I want to jump for a moment to what you're buying and some of the differences between what's going on in Europe today and the US because one of the things that we've been struck by is, obviously in Europe, you guys are back to the office, there seems to be much more interest among European investors in investing in office than there is here in the US, that is the verboten word nobody wants. Very few groups are saying it's time to invest in office because it's so distressed and it feels like there's a lot further to fall before we are pricing or people are just buying the asset for land value and then looking at a conversion.

I believe you've done at least one office to resi conversion in Paris, but I think for the most part, you've been buying office as office and re-tenanting and releasing it. So tell us what's going on from a leasing standpoint across the markets that you're working at in Europe, if there are certain cities that you like better than others.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Look, the structure of the market is quite different because the cities are different in the way they have been evolving. And so the supply and demand is very different, so the leasing market I would say is very different because if you think about, I don't know, Paris CBD, the vacancy today is less than 5%. So when you compare it to the 40% of San Francisco or I don't know about New York, but it's not the same story, so you have to consider that the market has a different structure. It doesn't mean that office is good everywhere as a sector in Europe because we did have a bit location of the market, especially it was crystallized after the COVID where you had the trends for most of the company to go to more central location, more mixed location with more qualitative assets with green credentials.

This is really a trend that has been and is still today, the fact that also companies has to fulfill different things, they have to fulfill regulation in terms of European taxonomy. And so real estate occupation is something that becomes really important for most of the headquarter, et cetera. We've done a lot of headquarter in Europe, we've done all the PWC, Deloitte in Rome, we've done Allen & Overy in Paris and AFI Global in Paris, in Berlin, et cetera. So we've been working a lot over the last few years with, I would say, big companies in Europe. And we really discover how real estate occupation for office is becoming something really critical for them because it's also a way to show the culture and to gather the people around the culture.

You have also to consider that the structure of the economy in Europe is slightly different from the US as well because we have less tech company. So most of the companies, you have to go back to work, it's not like everybody works from distance, it really depends from one company to another. So COVID did change the way of working because everybody had remote working policy, things like this, flexible work basically, but frankly, in most of the continental city except London, that is maybe between Europe and the US in terms of trends, I would say, most of the people return to the office, but most of the company has to rethink completely how they can provide the best services for their employee to make sure that they attract the talent because that's obviously one of the major issue of companies today.

And as we own a lot of companies for a different activity, we know that the most critical things for a company to grow today is to attract the right talent to work and the young generation, they are very requiring in terms of where they want to work, how they want to work, et cetera. They have to fulfill all the desire in terms of feeling at home in the office, the same way that they can work from their home, that it has to be very central, et cetera. From the experience we had including very recently, when you have a green building, and when I say green, it means very low carbon, lots of services, good from the health and safety, you have green areas as well, rooftop, you have things that makes your life happier generally speaking as a condition, it's always pre-life, frankly, including right now.

Recently, we just signed a lease in onboard for 15,000 square meters for 15 years and it was like well above our business plan in terms of France. So this is like happening a few weeks ago, but I can tell you also some record rent that we have achieved in Milan in the center buildings that we have lots of, maybe last year in Paris that also record rent. And we know that if we had to rent the same building today, it will be at a higher rent, so on the leasing market, it gives a view that is completely different.

Of course, all those secondary location, all the big 100,000 square meter, that campy style, all of this is, I would say, facing a big crisis, which means that at the end of the day, you will have a crisis in Europe as well on offices, but you'll have really the good offices which companies that needs to move in central location where there is no supply basically. And in Paris it's true, in Milan it's true, in Madrid, it's true in many cities in Europe, it's maybe less true-

Nancy Lashine:

Are you saying there will be a crisis in office because the B office, the less quality is going to need to be reworked because nobody really wants it?

Stephanie Bensimon:

... Yeah. And actually, the flight to quality is becoming a big topic and location is becoming the key factor for tenants to move.

Nancy Lashine:

And is location very much a factor of public transportation or just something else?

Stephanie Bensimon:

It's a factor of transportation, but it's also a factor of how the environment is mixed or not. So if you have an office, so the office market, for example, where you find only artifices is definitely not really good because people wants to share really a life around. So that's why you see more and more mixed project, and this is also very much favored by most of the cities in Europe.

Nancy Lashine:

The neighborhoods that are mixed have residential and retail and office?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yeah. And this is how finally, because we're doing a lot of offices in most of the cities in Europe, but most of the times we had to think, where does it really make sense to have offices? Do we have residential around, do we have retail, the right amenities and everything? And in fact, we saw that the same applied residential today in Europe, is that the stock is very obsolete, and in Europe, residential, for example, is obsolete not only by the things that you have to reposition in terms of structure of the building and energy efficiency, but also in terms of services, which you have a lot in the US for example, multifamily is a big sectors and you have a lot of multifamily with services. We don't really have that in Europe, at least not enough, and there is, I would say in terms of supply and demand, a big crisis, there is no supply when you compare it to what the people need in terms of living as well, especially when it comes to good quality, energy efficient and services.

Nancy Lashine:

One of the things that we've often had to manage is that European investors seem to be willing to take lower rates of return investing in Europe than US investors do. And in part it's because people were spoiled by opportunistic real estate during a couple of different crises here, which you've had fewer crises and they've been less acute. But I wonder, and also in my understanding generally, European investors don't like leverage as much, so they would like less than 50% for sure on their assets and maybe with office even lower. Whereas US investors, we have agency residential financing that's easy to get and relatively inexpensive at 65% loan to cost and a typical value add fund will allow investors to go up to 65% loan to value. How are you seeing investor returns today and do you see that European investors are reaching less for return than those that you're speaking to around the world?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Look, I find it's moving actually because you are right, it was up until the crisis, you felt like European investors were looking at lower return, generally speaking, lower leverage. So it was really hard sometimes to combine European and US investor in the same fund. But it also reflects the fact that we have also markets that are slower, less volatile in a way, so it reflects the risk as we see it. So sometimes US investor, when we speak to them, they're expecting more returns in Europe because it's outside their country. But when we are in the country, we think it's less risk than that because also price are moving, but they're not moving as quickly as it can happen in the US.

Also, bank system is different because you have less fund debt and banks tend to extend financing, find solutions rather than an investors tend to try to find solution as well more than given the key very quickly. So this is typically factors that also sometimes avoid the big volatility that we can sometimes see. So there is a different market that is working slightly differently, however, I think right now there is a shift because of the interest rate hike because most of the European investors see real estate as what asset allocation I should have right now since the bonds are very much higher if real estate allocation are reducing because as you said at the beginning, valuation are decreasing but not decreasing as they should and therefore if they have to invest in real estate, you have to be, so otherwise they do that. Of course returns on that in Europe would be slightly lower than the US. But so then-

Nancy Lashine:

What are the returns on debt versus equity today? Because one of the things that we are facing is oftentimes if you're looking at pref equity or convertible debt or a bridge loan, you can certainly find a coupon that's much higher than the equity coupon and your total return is not that different and obviously far more certain.

Stephanie Bensimon:

No, absolutely. This is really the issue and I think why also the market is not yet adjusting completely and investing completely, it's really because it's true today in Europe, for debt, you will have let's say eight to 12% depending on the risk profile of the debt, which I think it's more than a core plus usually inequity. So typically, investor requires really more than that, so for example, the deals we're working on and we recently signed are more like the 18 to 20% today than the 12 to 15% that we were used to look at. So there is a shift that is due to the situation of interest rate tag and investor expectation, of course there is not yet a shrew in markets in terms of buyer or seller, but it's coming.

Since 2024, we've been very active, we've signed two recent deal. One, we just bought a company in France, which is the market leader in marketplace for soft storage, which is also an emerging factor in Europe that we will consolidate in every country. Residential, definitely you can find some very good discount because as this market was really more like a trader versus developer markets, which were completely over levered, they were putting very high leverage and therefore when you start to just require 50 to 60%, you can really do a lot of deals where there is nobody really, as they're facing so many issues on their financing obligation, their stock that they have difficulty to sell.

Opportunities are coming, and I would expect also as the interest rate being cut at some point during the year at least that's okay, we don't know, but that's what the consensus is saying today, that this will also drive more consensus or where the cap rate should be and how the returns on equity should be positioned going forward. But I think today, there is a shift because the market is definitely more uncertain and therefore it has to be reflected in the returns that you are expecting.

Nancy Lashine:

That's great, thank you. Well, we are coming towards the end of our podcast, but I have to ask you some more personal questions if I can.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Sure.

Nancy Lashine:

One of the things that intrigued me was that the name Ardian, I was curious where it came from and I read somewhere that it's an ancient European name that means durability, strength, and boldness?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yes, that's right.

Nancy Lashine:

And I wanted to ask you, what's the boldest thing you have ever done?

Stephanie Bensimon:

I'm sorry. That's a tough question, you mean in my life or?

Nancy Lashine:

In your life, yeah, personally. Should I tell you? When I think about that, and I actually haven't given this any thought, I'm scared of heights and I did an outward bound sailing thing, five days you have to go do the remote, you're on an island by yourself for about a day and a half. That didn't scare me at all, but you have to walk across this high wire, you are blade, you've got to, but it's really freaking high between the trees and I really, really had a hard time doing that. I didn't have a hard time running around the island and jumping into the 55 degree water because like, so you get cold for a second. But when I think back to that, I go, gosh, if I had to do that again today, I don't know where I'd find the courage.

Stephanie Bensimon:

It's funny what you're saying because I've been in the vacations with my kids in December and I have the vertigo, I don't feel very well to be ... and they were really so excited to walk over the trees.

Nancy Lashine:

Yeah, the ropes.

Stephanie Bensimon:

And I said, no, I can't do it, look, it's just impossible for me, I will die, I will not be able to walk. And this was also in a Mauritius island, one of the highest, it was like 300 meters, so you see all the jungle and you really are above and you have to walk 15 minutes, so it's not just like five minutes, it's like very long. And so then I say, "let's do it," I don't know why I said that, and frankly, I found that at the end when you overcome your fears at the beginning and you know why you are doing it, this was to show the kids, I have to show them, and it was really interesting because I was, at the end, less scared than them-

Nancy Lashine:

Really?

Stephanie Bensimon:

... In a way, and of course I was not able to look, et cetera behind me, but I did it and they were so proud, so it was really a great experience. But no, I would say that thinking about it, thinking at the same time about your question, I think being a woman in our industry sometimes needs a lot of courage to grow, to take the lead on things to dare doing things. And I think I would never have thought that I could really pass all the different steps if somebody told me like, you will be doing this, and I never saw that it was actually possible. And I think the first things that I learned is a lot of courage that women have and that sometimes you have to overcome so many things with family, work, and the hundred things that you have to think about at the same times and this is, I think...

Nancy Lashine:

Well, I often sit at my desk and I think about Eleanor Roosevelt's quote, "do something that scares you every day." And so sometimes when I have to make a challenging phone call or have a challenging conversation, I just think about that and I go, okay, but having done what I do for so long, really, that's not that hard. I heard a presentation last week from a fabulous, this guy's a photographer and it was a very inspiring presentation, but he was photographing Mark Zuckerberg, and behind Zuckerberg's desk it says, what would you do if you weren't afraid?

Stephanie Bensimon:

You're right.

Nancy Lashine:

That has been resonating in my mind for the last week. So I think as a woman in your position, certainly something just to keep in the top of your mind.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yeah, very interesting, thank you.

Nancy Lashine:

Do you have a favorite book or movie that you've...

Stephanie Bensimon:

Look, recently, yes, I have many, a difficult question to choose, but as we're talking about women, there is a movie that probably I think is now in the US as well, I don't know whether you've seen the Biopic of Simone Veil?

Nancy Lashine:

No.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Because now it's actually in the US and it's this famous woman in France that actually died a few years ago that was cherished, went through the show, and then she became a big feminist for the woman's rights for abortion and then she became the first president of the European Parliament. So she was really in the action, and this film is describing this, and you see how the resilience of this woman, because I think she was one of the promoter of the reconciliation also at a European level between France and Germany as well, which I found also, especially in this moment of time, lessons learned on how we can live more in the...

Nancy Lashine:

Do you spell Veil, V-E-I?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yes, Simone Veil.

Nancy Lashine:

That sounds fabulous, thanks for that recommendation. I just listened on Netflix, there was a documentary, it wasn't a documentary, actually, they had actors playing the parts, but it was Diana Nyad who swam from Cuba to Florida, she did it at age 64, I believe, finally after eight tries, and it was entertaining, but sometimes you want a more heroic figure, which sounds like Simone Veil maybe is.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yes, she is really amazing. And the more I read about her and I see what she has done, the more I found it's quite extraordinary. As an actress, she was very humble as well, so that's also really as a woman.

Nancy Lashine:

Good, all right, that's great, thank you. If you could have dinner with anybody dead or alive, who would it be?

Stephanie Bensimon:

Look, so really a dream here is to have two big architects from different centuries having dinner with, for example, if you take Baron Osman who has done something crazy about Paris and changed completely the city, and if you had Baron Osman having dinner with [inaudible 00:40:02] for example, who also I love his work and how he brought a lot of things to architecture in the world, actually.

Because it's very interesting how those architects are changing the way people are designing the city and how we contribute as being an investors as well to this, when we think about long-term and how we have an impact as well on the way we are living. I think it's definitely something that when you think about all those big architects, how they have impacted the way people are. So frankly, being between them will be like a dream, you understand how they have so much vision on the future of how people live.

Nancy Lashine:

Well, maybe you can create an AI dinner and have AI research the two of them and then create the conversation, and I'd like to be there if you do it.

Stephanie Bensimon:

There was a documentary, a TV, a show in France who didn't work actually, who were using the AI to reverse some artists, and it was like people asking them questions and everything, so that could be funny to have them.

Nancy Lashine:

I'm sure something like that will be done, maybe not this year, but, yes.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Yeah.

Nancy Lashine:

Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us, this is really a very fun conversation. We covered a lot of territory, and your passion for what you do is really infectious, so we appreciate it.

Stephanie Bensimon:

Thank you so much.

Nancy Lashine:

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Real Estate Capital. Before you go, I have a quick favor to ask, we've put a lot of thought and effort into this show and making sure we bring you insights from real estate leaders that you don't normally find in the mainstream media. So if you're enjoying this show, please remember to follow it on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss an episode. We'd also love for you to share it with others or give us a review on Apple Podcasts so others can find us. Thanks again for tuning in, for more information about our firm, please visit our website @parkmadisonpartners.com.