On Thursday morning, the long queue stretched through the corridors of the Carrousel du Louvre. But, for once, the audience was not shuffling forward to see The Raft of the Medusa or the Mona Lisa. They were all there to listen to the jewel in France’s economic crown: Bernard Arnault.
The LVMH Annual General Meeting, presented by its emblematic CEO, took on special significance for shareholders this year. After years of positive performance by the global luxury giant, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Moët & Chandon, and Tiffany & Co reported a 6% decline in first-quarter activity, notably against the backdrop of war in the Middle East. Investors therefore flocked to hear the vision of the luxury behemoth, whose influence reverberates across all listed companies in the sector.
Bernard Arnault on stage at the Carrousel du Louvre – FNW
On stage, alongside Stéphane Bianchi, the group’s deputy CEO, and Cécile Cabanis, the group’s deputy CEO and CFO, Bernard Arnault emphasised LVMH’s resilience in 2025, with “very good results in a difficult geopolitical and monetary environment, as the euro has continued to appreciate.”
The executives reviewed the performance of the various divisions and, in this context, the captain of industry, as usual, handed out praise to the heads of his brands and maisons, from Pietro Beccari at Louis Vuitton to Guillaume Motte at Sephora, as well as Jean-Jacques Guiony, who took over as head of Wines & Spirits last year, and Véronique Courtois, who heads the Beauty division. The CEO also celebrated the arrival of Jonathan Anderson at the helm of Dior, noting that the brand is “struggling to deliver products because demand is so strong.”
But the Annual General Meeting is also an opportunity for Bernard Arnault to convey messages. Some are very direct, and have been hammered home for several years, as when he is pleased with the reception of the immense Maison Louis Vuitton in the heart of Shanghai, designed like a giant luxury yacht. “It receives 100,000 visitors a week. It’s quite extraordinary. In fact, I was congratulated by the General Secretary of the Communist Party for having done this,” he said. “Something like that would never have happened to me in France. If we’d said we were going to build a Vuitton boat on the Place de la Concorde, you can imagine the result. Even our ever-supportive trade unionists here would probably have criticised the whole thing. We did it in less than a year, which shows the dynamism of the countries in which we operate, compared with the sluggishness of our old Europe, which takes a long time to get going again and to modernise, still entangled in bureaucracy.”
Jean Arnault spoke as Bernard Arnault looked on. – FNW
He didn’t miss the opportunity either, when an effusive shareholder asked him about the group’s share buyback policy. “I congratulate you on buying shares! It’s the right time. I’m doing it too… But maybe not on the same scale.” In fact, after buying back €1.6 billion of shares in 2025, the company has already repurchased over €1 billion of shares in 2026.
A touch of humour that also allows the CEO to affirm his confidence in his group… and thus to encourage shareholders to follow him. Stéphane Bianchi touched on key issues such as the deployment of AI across the group, and the challenge of auditing and controlling the production chain, following the scandals in Italian subcontractors’ workshops.
On the other hand, other messages are not clearly stated… but remain implicit. For the first time, Bernard Arnault’s five children spoke at the AGM. Jean, the youngest, opened proceedings, praising the watchmaking expertise of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. Frédéric celebrated the know-how of the Italian house Loro Piana. Alexandre, who left Tiffany last year for the Wines & Spirits division alongside Jean-Jacques Guiony, emphasised the opportunity that the African continent represents for the group, with his division acting as a trailblazer. Delphine, chief executive of Christian Dior and the eldest of the siblings, presented the successful commercial launch of Jonathan Anderson’s vision for the house. Finally, Antoine, who is in charge of the group’s image, detailed LVMH’s societal commitments and announced a new edition of the Journées particulières next October. A few months after the patriarch insisted that the family would pass the 50% mark in the group’s share capital, this is a fresh signal about the future of the luxury giant.
A future in which Bernard Arnault will remain central. Answering a shareholder’s question about the future in terms of governance and his children’s ambitions to “climb to the top of the podium” of the group, the CEO didn’t open the door to the subject of succession. “Are the children very ambitious? I don’t know…”, before continuing: “You renewed my contract last year at 99%. We’ll talk about it again in seven or eight years.”
Moreover, Bernard Arnault has repeatedly stressed that it’s not the short term that he prefers to focus on. “For me, what I’m passionate about is seeing what the group will be like in five years’ time, what the group’s advantages will be. As far as the Middle East is concerned, it all depends on how this crisis is resolved. Either it will be a global catastrophe with very negative economic repercussions. Or it will be resolved quickly, and at that point business will return to normal.” In the event of a long-lasting crisis, the executive said, “we’ll have to deal with it. But it’s a safe bet that we’ll gain market share.”
However, the CEO gave little indication of his plans for the rest of the decade, pointing out that he expects Tiffany to become the world’s leading jewellery brand, that Sephora still has great potential worldwide, mentioning that a hotel project with Belmond is under consideration in Florida, or answering a question that hadn’t been asked about the future of the Samaritaine in Paris. “We’re going to make this department store on the Right Bank work,” he asserted. “With Patrice Wagner and his teams, it’s going to be great.” Shareholders notwithstanding, as long as the CEO delivers the questions and the answers, there’s little chance of the succession issue being clarified.
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