Meet the manager – Q&A with Johann Plé
- 01 August 2025 (3 min read)
Please tell us about yourself. What are your education and career experiences to date?
I am the father of three kids and now live in Lille, in the north of France. I grew up in Amiens and graduated from Rouen Business School (now Called Neoma Business school), where I met my wife whom I’ve been married to for 10 years already.
Back then, I did not have any clear career plan so I thought taking a gap year would help me figure that out and started to apply to different fields - finance related, mostly because I was rather good with numbers. I was fortunate to find a position on the Fixed Income Prop Trading desk of Calyon (Now CACIB) for a year starting in the summer of 2007. That was my first steps at La Défense.
I didn’t know much about the bond market yet but had to adapt fast as the subprime crises was starting to unravel. Best way to take a fast track learning session on bonds! I started in a historical period with great experts who taught me most of the things that still serve me today and helped me understand how fascinating bonds can be, encompassing macro-economic, politics, geopolitics, and ever changing drivers beyond the purely financial elements of valuation and arbitrage.
Following that experience, I was clear about my will to pursue bond investing and joined AXA IM in 2009 as an assistant PM. The name of the teams changed, management changed, and my role evolved but I am glad to say I still manage some of the funds that I began managing in 2010!
Along the way, I was involved early on in an additional dimension that was still relatively disregarded back then which was ESG strategies. Firstly, on the Euro Aggregate funds that I managed and later with the launch of our first Green bond fund in 2015. The ESG momentum had gained steam and I had gained a new passion, eager to share with clients the opportunity behind green bonds, accompany the growth of the market and grow our AUM.
What is interesting about your role here at AXA IM and what motivates you to do well?
I manage a very wide range of Euro Aggregate funds and Green Bonds funds now, that can invest across almost all of the Fixed Income asset classes, with a benchmark or total return approach.
I have worked through the sovereign debt crisis, Brexit, Trump 1.0, COVID, the 2022 bond crash and now Trump 2.0 to name a few. Every day, you have to become an expert - or try to be - about a new field. I find this both challenging and exciting. Blending this with the Green bond has been the opportunity to look beyond purely financial drivers and understand the need to transition to Net Zero and how key the bond market can be to help address this challenge.
I work with very talented people, some of whom have become great friends, and who have offered great support along my entire career. I have the chance to meet plenty of clients to talk about markets, performance and accompany some of them in their sustainability ambitions. I work with the marketing and media teams to broaden the visibility of our expertise but also the understanding of Green Bonds.
Being a PM is far more than just looking at bond yields. It means you have to wear multiple hats and work with plenty of people, which I truly love. We also have a true duty to our clients to walk the talk and make sure they can perfectly understand what we do for them and how we do it. This is what drives me day to day, always wondering if I can justify to our clients what I am doing with their investments.
How do you feel you complement the team’s skills and add value?
You have people that are more into details, others that are more about the global picture. I am more in the latter camp, but that cannot work if you don’t have detail-oriented people working with you as well.
The combination of profiles within our team is a great strength - some are more quantitative, others more macro or business oriented like myself. I believe we have a great balance of different people within our team yet with the same desire to always challenge how we do things and share the same belief that it is key to always hear everyone’s view.
I have learned a lot from my colleagues over the past 15 years at AXA IM and I am glad to be able to share that experience with my colleagues now. Whether that’s about navigating markets, trying not to overreact to periods of market stress, looking at portfolio construction or building a pitch that can resonate. I believe I bring calm and vision to the team (and some not fun jokes sometimes) and this is because we have a very strong confidence among each other.
What are some exciting developments in the green bond asset class?
We launched our first Green Bond fund in 2015, the year of the COP 21. The Green Bond market was barely $50bn and composed of utilities and quasi-sovereigns. The market has drastically transformed over the following years, with issuances doubling every year and breaking record after record. Last year we had close to $500bn of issuance.
The market is now global, well diversified across sectors, has more than 800 issuers, and is almost the size of the Euro credit market. We have a well-balanced universe large enough to build bond exposure adapted to clients’ needs at a time when yields remain close to historical highs, with the benefit of transparency and measurability.
What was once a niche market has now grown into a mature market, structured and standardized by additional regulation across Europe, UK and Asia that can now reassure investors about the credibility of the instrument to meet both their financial and sustainablility objectives. The fact that the Green bond market outperformed the conventional market 6 times over the past 9 years, that greenium is now close to 0 and that we see studies demonstrating that Green Bond issuers decarbonize faster than non-Green Bond issuers are very promising elements for the asset class that should continue to drive demand.
What does progress mean to you?
As I say to my kids, progress is not about making everything right but about trying not to repeat the mistakes we have made, and learn from them. Progress takes time, it demands patience, perseverance and commitment. The search for progress is a powerful driver because as long as you pursue it, it will help you stay curious, open-minded and make the journey more exciting!
And aside from work, tell us something interesting about yourself that most people won’t know?
I could say that I have played table tennis for years in competition now that the Lebrun brothers have demonstrated how great this sport can be during the last Olympics. But the best story is certainly that growing up in Amiens, I had a chance to have our First Lady as a French teacher in college. Did not realize that before E. Macron started to run for president, but she was a great teacher!
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Risk Warning
The value of investments, and the income from them, can fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the amount originally invested.
Risk Warning
The value of investments, and the income from them, can fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the amount originally invested.