AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) today announced the appointment of Laurent Seyer as Global Head of Investment Solutions effective 2 May 2012. Laurent Seyer joins from Lyxor Asset Management (€78.5bn assets under management) where he was CEO since 2006. He will join the Management Board of AXA IM and report to Dominique Carrel-Billiard, CEO of AXA IM. Laurent replaces Thibaud de Vitry, who has left the company. 

Dominique Carrel-Billiard, CEO of AXA Investment Managers, commented on the appointment, “We are delighted to recruit an expert of such high calibre as Laurent Seyer to further the development of our investment solutions expertise. Our relationship with the AXA Group places investment solutions at the heart of our multi-expert model and the solutions business constitutes a truly differentiating feature of AXA IM’s offering to clients.

 “It will be Laurent’s mission to keep our solutions offering at the forefront of innovation, from ALM management (LDI, fiduciary management and Solvency II friendly solutions) to multi-asset class investments and integrated Funds of Hedge Funds solutions; as well as to increase its visibility and accelerate the commercial development of AXA IM’s solutions business.”

Laurent Seyer started his career in 1988 at Société Générale in the Internal Audit and Advisory department. In 1995, he took the lead on a number of acquisition projects for the company. In 1997, he joined the Corporate Finance department in London as Head of Financial Institutions. In 1999, Laurent Seyer joined the Equity Derivatives team of Société Générale’s Corporate & Investment Banking division and launched the company’s pan-European life insurance branch Inora Life Ltd., which offers unit-linked structured products, and went on to become Head of Sales in the Swiss branch in 2003. In May 2006, Seyer was named Chief Executive Officer of Lyxor Asset Management. He holds a degree from the “Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris”.