Many have conjectured the fictional Roys, owners of global media and entertainment conglomerate Waystar RoyCo – and their fight for control of the company in the middle of uncertainty about the health of patriarch, Logan Roy, are based on Rupert Murdoch‘s family. Others have asserted that other billionaire families – the Trumps, Redstones, Maxwells, and Hearsts – share similar qualities as the Roys. But then, there’s the Arnaults.
The case of the family of Bernard Arnault, chairman-CEO of Louis Vuitton, and world’s richest man, is just as speculative as the Roys and Murdochs. Eldest child, Delphine, and four sons, Antoine, Frederic, Alexandre, and Jean – each with roles in the luxury fashion house empire, vying for control.
Arnault Sr responded to an analyst’s question regarding succession plans earlier this year: ‘You will have noticed that the retirement age is being raised.’ This referred to Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) shareholders recently extending the company’s working age limit to 80, leading to the belief that Bernard will never retire. Well, Emmanuel Macron has good reason to smile to that. Because at a time of unrest and protests against his government raising the retirement age of workers in France, at least a very significant person is enthusiastically supporting the increase in the age of superannuation.
Arnault, then the third richest man in the world, then 70 years old, graced the November 2019 cover of Forbes. The magazine explored why ‘he’s not done yet’. ‘Our father is very young,’ Delphine had told Forbes about her then 70-year-old father. ‘He’ll work for 30 more years,’ declared Alexandre, while another son Antoine believed he wouldn’t ‘ever stop’.
However, Arnault must be aware that he needs to choose his successor before he leaves – the company, or for the great beyond. He might want to steer clear of Game of Thrones-style machinations because he must have seen the bloodbath that have taken place in other extremely wealthy families.
Bernard has been quite explicit about one thing: that control of the family business will remain in the family, with roles being assigned based on each child’s abilities. He is now reportedly prepared to identify his heir, in his own inimitable style. Arnault has a 90-minute lunch meeting with each of his five kids once a month to ‘audition’ them for the role. The luxury king generally begins these lunch meeting by reading discussion topics he prepares on his iPad. These range from matters related to the company, and seeking opinions on specific managers, to whether it’s time for a shake-up of one of LVMH’s many brands. The selection, he says, will be based on merit, and there’s only one judge: himself. A veritable King Lear.
Arnault’s attempt is also reminiscent of all those fairytales, with their variants in different cultures, in which the king wants to choose one of his three (or four?) sons to be his heir. He assigns the princes a few jobs to complete – like bringing him a priceless present, keeping certain ‘seeds’ safe, discovering what is within a packet while keeping others from seeing it. His successor is then chosen according to how successful the candidates are in their tasks. The youngest prince typically prevailed in most versions. What will it be in Arnault’s case? And here, there’s also a daughter to consider.
Succession, whether of the Logan Roy, Game of Thrones or the classic fairy tale kind, is being scripted in a private dining room at LVMH’s global headquarters in Paris. If Arnault does manage to finally anoint a suitable, and maintain his close-knit family’s control over LVMH, he will certainly establish a new fairytale-style statement that other extremely rich people could use as a temple for their future.
The writer is professor of statistics, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata
