He Quit a $2 Million Job to Help Run France

A few days after defeating Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron addressed a group of more than 400 ardent supporters at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. Each had been vetted to represent Macron’s new party, La République en Marche, or Republic on the Move, in France’s fast-approaching legislative elections in June. Among the diverse crowd of mostly political neophytes hoping to win a seat in France’s National Assembly was a 50-year-old French-born money manager, Roland Lescure.

“It was amazing,” says Lescure, who in April quit his C$2.6 million-a-year job ($1.9 million) as chief investment officer of Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, Canada’s second-largest pension fund manager, to stump for Macron full time. “This guy came in, there was a standing ovation for literally five minutes on the part of people, most of whom had never met him but who had worked their butts off for months to help him get elected.”