BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
You may remember that last September LVMH changed its mind on a deal it had made in late 2019, that deal being the acquisition of American jeweller Tiffany & Co for $16.2bn. LVMH claimed that there were several reasons they were pulling out of the deal, but the main ones were the price of the company (considering that a pandemic is currently ongoing) and corporate mismanagement on Tiffany’s side, which LVMH was planning to sue over according to an article on Bloomberg.
In the same way that tempers seemed to flair during the Brexit negotiations, we were concerned about the potential fallout if LVMH and Tiffany failed to reach a deal. During the Covid-19 pandemic, luxury goods sales have plummeted (except for fancy champagne, apparently). It seemed that there could be potentially huge consequences if these two industry giants failed to see eye-to-eye. Luckily, that didn’t happen, and it appears that the LVMH acquisition will go ahead after all.
A recent Bloomberg article stated that LVMH had appointed Tiffany’s ‘executive vice president for products and communication’, the appointee being LVMH founder and chief executive Bernard Arnault’s son, Alexandre Arnault. Alexandre is one of five children of Bernard Arnault, and cut his teeth in many of the LVMH subsidiaries such as Italian luxury fashion brand Fendi and German luxury luggage maker Rimowa.
His new position at Tiffany is undoubtedly his most significant assignment yet. He’ll be working alongside Tiffany’s new CEO Anthony Ledru to oversee and provide direction for Tiffany as it now sails under the LVMH flag.
What will this mean for Tiffany? Well, we hope not much. I like how LVMH tends to let its companies run themselves the way they want to, with slight changes coming in here and there to tweak the business in question. But, for now, we’ll have to wait and see for any results to come in.
Oh, and the price LVMH acquired Tiffany for? According to that Bloomberg article, I linked earlier; it went for $16bn.
