Bernard Arnault ‘forbids’ group’s executives to speak to seven news outlets, according to La Lettre

Bernard Arnault, boss of global luxury giant LVMH, has notified the group’s top executives of an “absolute ban on talking” to seven news outlets, including Mediapart, Le Canard Enchaîné and La Lettre, as the latter reported on Wednesday, citing an email attributed to the French billionaire.

Contacted by the AFP agency, LVMH has declined to comment.

“Our group is an object of prime interest for the media,” wrote Arnault in the introduction of an e-mail whose subject was “Recommendations,” dated January 17 and sent to 16 people, most of them members of LVMH’s executive committee. They include his daughter Delphine Arnault, CEO of Christian Dior Couture, Chantal Gaemperle, head of HR at LVMH, Jean-Jacques Guiony, CFO of LVMH, and Pietro Beccari, CEO of Louis Vuitton.

In the email quoted verbatim by La Lettre, Arnault went on to say that “news outlets are also looking for ‘confidential’ information from internal sources outside the communication channels that we have set up, while so-called investigative sites are keen to publish, mostly with a negative bias, allegedly confidential letters, exploiting the public’s interest in the luxury industry to attract new readers with eye-catching headlines.”

Arnault said that he “formally condemns any behaviour consisting in maintaining relations with unscrupulous journalists, feeding them information and comments on the group’s activities.”

He also “[reminded] everyone of the formal prohibition to disseminate information and comments about the family” and warned that he “will be inflexible in the face of any breach of these rules, which would signify for me an intolerable lack of loyalty.”

According to La Lettre, Arnault asked his executives “to pass on these recommendations to the main heads of divisions, making it clear to them that any failure to comply with them (and this will inevitably become known) will be regarded as serious misconduct, with all its attendant consequences.”

According to the same document, Arnault concluded by “attaching a list of publications to which I ask you to observe an absolute ban on talking,” namely La Lettre, Glitz Paris, Miss Tweed, L’Informé, Puck (US), Mediapart, and Le Canard Enchaîné, as well as “any other confidential newsletters and publications of the same type that exist or could be created.”

Besides being the boss of LVMH, owner of more than 70 labels in fashion, leather goods, wines, spirits, perfumes and jewellery, billionaire Bernard Arnault is also the proprietor of French daily newspapers Le Parisien and Les Echos.med