Blacklisted media: Bernard Arnault promises to be “intractable” with LVMH executives who speak to these seven newspapers

Bernard Arnault. MAXPPP – Vincent Isore

Bernard Arnault, à la tête du numéro un mondial du luxe LVMH, a signifié aux cadres du groupe une "interdiction absolue de parler" à sept médias français affirme mercredi l'un d'eux, La Lettre, qui reproduit un mail attribué au milliardaire.

In an email entitled “Recommendations”, dated January 17 and sent to 16 people, most of them members of the group's executive committee, the French CEO concludes by “attaching a list of publications to which (he) asks to respect an absolute ban on speaking”.

The media concerned are:  La Lettre, Glitz Paris, Miss Tweed, L'Informé, Puck (US), Mediapart, Le Canard Enchaîné as well as "all other confidential letters or pages of the same type that exist or could be created". 

Contacted by AFP, the French group did not comment.

Senior executives of the group

Among the recipients of this document reproduced by La Lettre are his daughter Delphine Arnault, CEO of Christian Dior Couture, Chantal Gaemperle, director of human resources at LVMH, Jean-Jacques Guiony, the group's financial director, and Pietro Beccari, CEO of Louis Vuitton.

“Our group is an object of major interest to the media”, Mr. Arnault writes in the preamble.

“Unscrupulous journalists”

But “the media are also looking for +confidential+ information from internal sources outside the communication channels that we have set up, not to mention biased publications, most of the time of a negative nature, so-called confidential letters, so-called investigative sites that use the public's attraction to luxury to attract a new readership in a racy manner”, deplores the CEO.

Bernard Arnault says there “formally condemn any behavior consisting of maintaining relations with unscrupulous journalists and giving them information or comments on the life of the group".

"Considered a serious fault"

The CEO of LVMH "reminds everyone of the strict prohibition on communicating information or comments on the family" and warns that he "will be intractable in the face of any breach of these rules, which would mark for (him) an intolerable lack of loyalty".

He asks his executives “to transmit these recommendations to the main division managers, making it clear to them that any failure to comply with them (and this will inevitably be known) will be considered serious misconduct, with the consequences attached”, according to La Lettre.

At the head of LVMH, which has more than 70 fashion, leather goods, wine, spirits, perfume and jewelry brands, billionaire Bernard Arnault also owns the French daily newspapers Le Parisien and Les Échos.