I came upon this sentence:
Le nom avenir quant à lui renvoie à quelque chose de plus concret, de plus proche.
Quant à lui seems oddly placed here. I translate this in my head as "As for the noun avenir, it refers to something more concrete, more imminent." But if I were translating this back to French, I would write "Quant au nom avenir, il renvoie..."
Their phrasing seems to echo complex inversion. Why is quant à lui used here rather than my phrasing?