Bernard Arnault denies rift in family after Le Monde report

Paris - Bernard Arnault, the head of French luxury group LVMH, denied on Sunday that there was any "crack" in his family, responding to an article in the French newspaper Le Monde that described disagreements among his children over the future leadership of the luxury giant, according to news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"Those who ... bet on the crack in a family to sell newspapers ... will be waiting a long time," he wrote in a lengthy message posted on LVMH's account on X.

The Le Monde piece, published Friday and the last in a series of six, was written by journalists Raphaëlle Bacqué and Vanessa Schneider, who examined the "rivalries" between Arnault's five children, born of two marriages, as well as the ill-feeling between his second wife, Hélène Mercier, and his son-in-law, the billionaire Xavier Niel.

Arnault answered the newspaper in kind. "At the Arnaults', apparently, one does not discuss, one plots; one does not deliberate, one competes," he wrote, before adding: "In the real world, my children run houses, build teams, take decisions and, sacrilege, call each other on Sundays." What an ordinary family calls a Sunday, he wrote, is called an intrigue in his.

Succession still open

Arnault, 77, has not named a successor. His five children — one daughter and four sons — all work for the group and four sit on its board, while two of them, Antoine Arnault and Delphine Arnault, now also sit on the executive committee.

Asked about the succession by a shareholder at LVMH's annual general meeting in April, Arnault replied that he had been "renewed" the previous year at "99 percent", and suggested the shareholder put the question again "in seven or eight years".

This article was written with the assistance of AI.