Single Family Office — Paris & London
Four decades. $1 billion in assets. Transactions that shaped modern France, the global luxury industry, and sovereign economies. The Polge de Combret family has not merely witnessed history — it has helped write it.
Discover the HeritageA family at the intersection of the French Republic and global capital — for two generations.
Track Record
Who We Are
A private family office built not on inheritance alone — but on four decades of making markets that others could not enter.
Combret Ventures is the investment vehicle of François Polge de Combret — former Secrétaire Générale de l'Élysée, 25-year Managing Partner at Lazard, and one of the most consequential dealmakers in postwar French history. The family office was created in 2005 to hold, compound, and selectively deploy the capital accumulated over a career without parallel.
We are not a fund. We do not raise capital. We do not answer to LPs, boards, or quarterly mandates. We invest our own money — with the patience of an institution and the alignment of a dynasty.
The family's connection to President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing — François having served directly under VGE at the Élysée — represents a depth of institutional access and historical trust that no amount of capital can replicate.
Since 2020, Augustin Polge de Combret has joined as co-head of investment strategy, carrying this legacy into public equities, private equity co-investments, early-stage venture, and ultra-prime real estate.
Network
The defining characteristic of Combret Ventures is not capital — it is proximity. Over forty years, the Polge de Combret family built direct working relationships with heads of state, sovereign wealth funds, the architects of the global luxury industry, and the world's most significant institutional investors. Beginning with a President of France — and continuing through the family's own generation, at the summit of European industry.
Investment Strategy
Long-biased, concentrated equity positions in businesses we understand completely — often through relationships that predate the position by decades. We do not trade. We accumulate and hold.
Direct co-investments and select fund partnerships in private markets. We bring more than capital — we bring the kind of access and credibility that cannot be purchased. We are never forced sellers.
We back founders where our network creates asymmetric advantage. An introduction from Combret Ventures opens doors that most funds cannot. We invest where that matters most.
Leadership
Founder
A former Secrétaire Générale de l'Élysée under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing — the most senior administrative role in the French state — François joined Lazard in 1981 at the recommendation of Antoine Riboud, the legendary founder of Danone and one of his closest personal mentors. He became a Managing Partner and shareholder in 1985, remaining a significant Lazard shareholder until 2013. In 1990, Édouard and David de Rothschild personally approached François to leave Lazard and co-found what would have been named Rothschild Combret & Co. — a testament to the standing he had already achieved at the very highest level of French finance. He declined, and remained at Lazard. He generated more than half of Lazard Paris's income from 1990 to 2005, advising on Dior, YSL, Céline, Renault-Nissan, Airbus, Safran, and Kering, before serving as Vice-Chairman for Europe at UBS. Throughout this period he sat on the boards of Sanofi, Safran, Bouygues, Nexans, Renault, and Essilor — an institutional footprint spanning France's most consequential listed companies. He served as Chairman of the Musée Rodin from 2000 to 2010, and was a member of the Advisory Board of the Cercle Interallié — Paris's most exclusive private club — alongside H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco. In 2010 he was called upon — alongside Tony Blair and George Soros — to develop Guinea, and in 2011 was appointed by Rio Tinto to advise on the $20B Simandou project.
Co-Head of Investment Strategy
A graduate of Emory's Goizueta Business School and HKUST, Augustin began his career as a private banker at Credit Suisse in Basel before joining Combret Ventures in 2020 as co-head of investment strategy. His investment instincts were evident early: in 2014 — years before the mainstream — he invested $500,000 in Tesla, a position that has grown to approximately $40 million today, representing a roughly 80x return on a conviction call made at the very inception of the electric vehicle era. Active in ultra-prime real estate through a partnership with Philippe Ménager and FEAU in Paris, he also participated in the $250M sale of La Villa Les Cèdres — the most expensive private residence ever sold in the world.
Contact
Combret Ventures does not advertise, does not accept unsolicited proposals, and does not manage external mandates. If you believe there is a conversation worth having at this level, we welcome it — quietly.