C
Meaning
"We have the money, we are not putting it in the right place"
François Villeroy de GalhauThe Governor of the Banque de France said it plainly at Aktionnaire Day. And it's the most important sentence in finance today. At CityZeen, we've been building around that truth from day one.
Being in the right room changes everything.
Aktionnaire Day at STATION F was proof that the energy we're building CityZeen around is alive and growing, with more than 7000 people present
🌱 From the Field
A room full of people who actually mean it.
There's something about walking into a space where everyone is genuinely building something. Just people with ideas, conviction, and the willingness to push each other further.
That's what Aktionnaire Day felt like. And honestly? It stayed with me on the way home, which doesn't happen at every event.
Seven people worth listening to.
Each of them brought something different. But they all circled the same question: what is money actually for?
Governor · Banque de France
Europeans save more than Americans, but park it in bank deposits and "safe" livrets. Result: European company equity sits at 80–90% of GDP. The US? 220%. The money exists. The courage to deploy it toward real things hasn't yet been shown. His prescription: individual shareholding, pension savings, venture capital. His challenge to the room: stop being fascinated by Trump. Build the European counter-project.
→ For CityZeen: this is the structural opening. European savings looking for purpose-aligned, real-asset destinations. That's exactly what regenerative real estate offers.
Mark Kepeneghian Vice-Président · ADAN · CEO & Fondateur · Kriptown & Lise
Investment flows into SMEs are five times lower in France than in the United States as a percentage of GDP. Mark didn't say this to shame anyone. He said it to identify the gap and then spend his career closing it.
CEO of Lise, founder of Kriptown, Vice-President of ADAN, and board member of France FinTech his entire trajectory is built around one conviction: that tokenisation is not a simple financial innovation it is a paradigm shift that will touch every asset class. Ignoring this revolution is not an option. Adan
What makes Mark rare isn't the technology. It's the purpose behind it. His vision is to become the pan-European stock exchange for SMEs, to revive regional exchanges and give small companies the financing they deserve. He came from traditional finance, notably Rothschild & Co, before specialising in answers that tokenisation offers to illiquidity risks in unlisted companies. That journey from the establishment to the frontier is exactly the bridge we need more people to cross.
→ For CityZeen : real estate assets like Amoria are exa purpose-driven instruments Mark is building infrastructure for. Digital rails for real places. That's where finance and meaning converge.
Managing Partner · Kima Ventures
One of Europe's most active early-stage investors, with a philosophy that's less about ROI decks and more about conviction. He bets on people. On momentum. On the moment where someone's vision becomes undeniable. That's a very human way to think about capital.
→ Kima's approach is the venture equivalent of what we believe at CityZeen : trust the energy first, the numbers will follow.
Directrice Générale France, Belgique, Luxembourg & Monaco · BlackRock
BlackRock managing €10 trillion globally. But what matters isn't the number, it's the shift happening inside institutions that size. ESG, sustainable mandates, climate risk integration. The biggest allocators on earth are being forced, by regulation, by clients, by reality to ask: where is this money actually going? And what does it build?
→ When Estelle Castres asks that question in front of a young French audience, something is shifting in the institutional landscape. CityZeen is on the right side of that shift.
Directeur des Investissements Responsables · Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management child Asset Management
Responsible investment not as a label, but as a method. He's spent years translating values into asset allocation frameworks that actually hold up under scrutiny. The rare voice in finance who refuses to separate ethics from performance.
→ His work is proof that rigour and meaning aren't opposites. They're the same thing, seen from different angles.
Fondateur · BlaBlaCar & Dift
He built a company around the idea that strangers can share a car seat, and trust each other enough to get in. That's not a logistics startup. That's a philosophical bet on human solidarity, scaled through technology. With Dift, he's doing it again: rethinking how we move, and why.
→ Marcel Pagnol wrote about Marseille neighbourhoods where everyone knew everyone. Mazzella is rebuilding that fabric at scale. CityZeen believes in the same thing for real places.
Directrice Générale · France Digitale
She leads the organisation that represents 2,000+ startups and 400+ investors in France. Her presence at Aktionnaire Day wasn't coincidental, she is there for the digital builders and individual investors are converging around the same questions: sovereignty, purpose, long-term value creation.
→ The digital economy and the real economy need to speak to each other. Maya is building that bridge on the tech side. We're building it from the ground up literally.
Managing Director · Ardian
Ardian manages over €160bn in private assets. But the conversation worth having isn't about scale — it's about what private capital can do that public markets can't. Real assets. Patient capital. Transformative infrastructure. The kind of investment that changes a neighbourhood, not just a portfolio.
→ This is the model CityZeen is building with projects like Amoria: private capital with a public mission. Returns that you can walk into.
At CityZeen, we love the Thinkers behind the numbers
Finance needs philosophy. Always has.
We talk about markets, rates, and returns as if they exist independently of human beings. They don't. Every financial decision is a moral one. Here are the thinkers who remind us why.
🌿Marcel Pagnol, La Gloire de mon Père
"The real wealth of a man is not what he accumulates. It's what he gives away without counting it."
Pagnol wrote about Provence, about human warmth, about the kind of community that holds people together without contracts or spreadsheets. He understood something that no MBA programme teaches: that belonging is an asset. That place has value beyond its price.
🔥Cynthia Fleury, Ci-Gît l'Amer
"What we retain from an encounter is not the perfectly crafted narrative, but the intensity the authenticity of someone's momentum toward life and others."
Fleury is a philosopher and psychoanalyst who works at the intersection of democracy, care, and resilience. She asks: what does it cost a society when its citizens lose the sense that they matter? Her answer has direct implications for how we think about investing, not as extraction, but as participation.
⚖️Simone Weil, L'Enracinement
"To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul."
Written in 1943, but never more relevant. Weil argued that human beings need roots in places, in communities, in shared history. Displacement isn't just physical. It's spiritual. Real estate that regenerates communities isn't a niche ESG product. It's a response to the deepest human need there is.
Amartya Sen — Development as Freedom
"Development can be seen as a process of expanding real freedoms that people enjoy."
The Nobel economist who refused to reduce human flourishing to GDP. For Sen, the goal of an economy is not growth, it's the expansion of what people can do and be. That's the lens through which CityZeen reads every investment decision. Does this expand freedom? Does this open up life?
→ Development as Freedom · Harvard University Press
The CityZeen Position
Finance is a tool. The question is what you're building with it.
Villeroy de Galhau said we have the money. Pagnol showed us what real wealth feels like. Simone Weil told us what humans actually need. Sen gave us the measure that matters.
Put it together and you get a very clear mandate: stop parking capital in places that deaden the future, and start directing it toward things that deserve to exist.
❌ Not this
SCPI that bleed in silence
Arms funds financing the next war
Livrets returning below inflation
Products you don't understand, in companies you've never heard of, serving goals you'd never choose
✅ This
Real places. Real impact. Real returns.
Regenerative assets you can walk into
Communities strengthened, not extracted
Capital aligned with how you actually want to live and what world you want to leave
With Amoria, our regenerative commercial real estate project in Spain, we're turning that position into something tangible. A place. An ecosystem. A shared investment that employees, companies, and communities can own together and be proud of.
Because Build Wealth, Heal Earth isn't a slogan. It's a commitment to the idea that the two have always belonged together and that it's time to act like it.
The money exists. Let's put it in the right place.
Join the CityZeen community. Discover Amoria. Connect with builders, investors, and citizens who believe finance should serve life.
🤝 The Voices That Stayed With Us
Sharp minds. Real conversations.
Every event has speakers. Few have people who genuinely move the room.
If any of this resonates, let's talk. 🌱
Ready to build with us?
Join the CityZeen community. Discover how regenerative real estate turns shared energy into sustainable returns.
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