Chateau de Chantilly

Yesterday I return from Paris and Astorg's annual investors meeting. The presentations off with a bang! Thursday as the day before GeoServices sold to Schlumberger for $1 billion or 7.5X cost and 1X the fund. Geo a "mud logging" company providing oil companies with engineering reports that help optimise the drilling process while keeping costs under control. The CEO gives a thorough overview of the business and receives a well deserved standing ovation from us. Astorg bought Geo in 2004, somehow convincing the founding-owner to go with Astorg and not an IPO at two-thirds the IPO valuation. The deal has worked for everybody and one of the Astorg partners notes to me: "a dream scenario."

I have known Astorg since 2004 when I helped raise their third fund and again in 2007 when I assisted with number four. We will re-union again later this year for Astorg V, which is like hanging out with a bunch of your friends. How unusual that I should know so intimately a Paris team or they a dude from California.

We conclude our first day at Chateau de Chantilly, pictured, a magnificent castle dating to the 15th Century, which we have to ourselves while receiving a guided tour through the magnificent art galleries, home to the finest collection of paintings in France after the Louvre. The estate includes the Chantilly Racecourse and Grandes Ecuiries (stables) which, at 186 meters long, are considered the most beautiful in the world, our guide tells us. It is easy to agree. At the stables' end, an enormous marble enclosure hosts a circus for displaying the horses and we are treated to a show: the animals paraded before us in a dreamlike fashion. Surreal. We conclude with dinner in the adjoining gallery and raise toasts and congratulations from Xavier who welcomes new investments and staff while saying good-bye to companies sold this year. There have been several, lucky us.

Note to Moe: the chateau and the Great Stables featured in the '85 Bond film "A View To A Kill" as the home of Max Zorin (Christopher Walkin) which was infiltrated by 007 (played for the last time by Roger Moore) in Bond's quest to eliminate Zorin. Which he does somewhere in the BA.

Photo from Craig Patik.