Paris: With €34.8bn of European real estate assets under management, AEW has just made a hire that says as much about where the real estate management industry is heading as it does about who is filling the role. The firm has appointed Gwénaël Dupeux to the newly created position of Head of Technology and Transformation Europe, tasking him with building a function that didn't previously exist at this scale within the business. Dupeux, 41, joins today, is based in Paris and reports directly to Vanessa Roux-Collet, AEW's CEO Europe.
Dupeux arrives from BPCE, France's second-largest banking group and parent of Natixis Investment Managers, of which AEW is an affiliate. Before that, he spent a decade at Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking, most recently as Co-Head of its Transformation Management Office, where he led and accelerated the bank's key transformation initiatives while co-managing a team of 50 professionals. That background in banking-scale transformation, rather than a traditional real estate career, signals how AEW sees the skillset this role demands.
In his new role, Dupeux will lead AEW's technology, data, AI and transformation agenda, overseeing the firm's IT, data and process management functions alongside corporate development activity across Europe. "By modernising and transforming how our teams work across Europe, we maintain our professionals' focus on the optimisation of our assets, and ultimately the delivery of superior, long-term value for our investors. Building on the strong progress already made across our business, we will accelerate the use of technology, data and AI to enhance efficiency, strengthen execution, and allow our professionals to focus even more on what matters most: value creation for our clients. Technology, AI, and data are fundamentally redefining both how real estate is utilised by occupiers and how it must be managed. To lead in this new era, AEW's ambition is to combine these advanced capabilities with our most valuable asset: our people. Bringing together technology, data, transformation and corporate development under Gwénaël's leadership will help accelerate our strategic ambitions, strengthen execution across Europe and ensure we remain agile and closely aligned with our clients' evolving needs," said Roux-Collet.
What deserves attention from investors and asset managers watching this space is the structural choice AEW has made: rather than treating technology as a support function reporting into operations, it has elevated data, AI and corporate development into a single role sitting directly under the regional CEO. For a firm managing tens of billions in assets across core, value-add and opportunistic strategies, that kind of organisational signal typically precedes real capital commitment to proptech and AI-driven asset management, not just software upgrades, and is worth watching as a leading indicator of where large European managers are directing technology spend next.
AEW is one of the world's largest real estate asset managers, with €73.2bn in total assets under management as at 30 June 2026 and over 815 employees globally across offices in Boston, London, Paris and Hong Kong. As the European real estate arm of Natixis Investment Managers, which manages more than €1.3 trillion in assets globally, AEW has invested and divested more than €13bn of real estate across European markets over the past five years.
People mentioned
- Gwénaël Dupeux, Head of Technology and Transformation Europe, AEW
- Vanessa Roux-Collet, CEO Europe, AEW
Companies mentioned
- AEW, global real estate asset manager appointing Dupeux to its newly created role
- BPCE, French banking group and Dupeux's previous employer
- Natixis Investment Managers, parent asset management platform of AEW
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