Rousseau played a key role in FRR’s success, helping to navigate considerable change during his 12-year tenure, especially in positioning it as a respected sustainability-driven asset owner. At the time he joined FRR, it was embarking on a fully-fledged liability-driven investment (LDI) approach in the wake of the 2010 French pension reform, having been an assets-only structure until that point. This put a stop to inflows and instead required FRR to make regular payments to CADES, a fund established in 1996 to assume and redeem past social security debt.

He was also instrumental in reshaping FRR’s investment strategy to overcome limitations set by the French government. As a public organisation and France’s largest pension reserve fund, the FRR is constrained by a lot of regulation, not least the requirement to run an investment strategy that is entirely outsourced. Another key achievement was raising the percentage of return-seeking assets from 38% at the time Rousseau joined to over 50% by 2015.

FRR was a founding member of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). Key ESG-related milestones during Rousseau’s tenure include its 2014 partnership with Amundi, AP4 and MSCI on ‘Low Carbon Leaders’ indices, and joining the Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance in 2019.

In 2020, FRR found itself having to adjust again, as government responses to the coronavirus pandemic effectively put paid to the prospect of a new investment approach for FRR – for instance, a shift to more illiquid, long-term classes. The overall strategy is now based on optimum portfolios that are split between various asset classes in three groups:

• Hedging assets. These are highly correlated with FRR’s liabilities, with low expectation of performance and risk level and includes government bonds, liquid assets and dollar and euro-denominated investment grade corporate bonds.

Before joining FRR, Rousseau was attached to the French Embassy in Sweden as an economic adviser, a position he took up after two years on the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. Rousseau began his career at the French treasury, eventually joining BNP Paribas where he spent 11 years working in international banking and finance in its Paris, Tokyo, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney offices. He graduated from the French National School of Administration (ENA) in 1986. He also holds a degree in political sciences and master’s degrees in law and economics from the University of Aix-en-Provence.