“I have a specific opinion, which you can imagine”declared Bernard Arnault at the end of the general meeting of shareholders of the LVMH group, Thursday, April 21, which postponed the age limit for exercising the function of general manager to 80 years, instead of 75 years.
Asked by the press about his ” worry “ As for the ballot for the presidential election on Sunday April 24, which pits Marine Le Pen, the representative of the National Rally, against the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, the founding CEO of the luxury group first replied: “I prefer not to express myself. » Obviously, for weeks, the desire to support the outgoing President of the Republic has been gripping the 73-year-old leader. But his relatives would have dissuaded him, for fear of a counterproductive effect.
In 2017, Mr. Arnault felt freer. Two days before the second round of the presidential election which opposed Emmanuel Macron to Marine Le Pen, it is in the columns of the daily The echoes that he had explained his choice. “Among the two branches of the electoral alternative which presents itself to the French on May 7, one is a dead branch. It is that of confinement, of fear, of bitterness.he then wrote in a column entitled “Why I vote Emmanuel Macron”, published on May 5 in the newspaper he has owned since 2007. But the 2022 election is nothing like that of 2017.
Like many French bosses, Mr. Arnault knows how much Mr. Macron struggles with his image as a “president of the rich”. Consequently, the billionaire, who, the day after the presidential election of François Mitterrand, the first President of the French Republic elected under the label of the Socialist Party, on May 10, 1981, had gone into exile in the United States, became more discreet. He will not take up the pen this year.
“European” and “for Europe”
To the press, however, he recalls how much he is “European” and “for Europe”. To LVMH shareholders, the CEO also argues “the extraordinary impact” of his group “on the French economy, the standard of living, the trade balance and public finances”. To this end, the LVMH group called on the firm Asterès, created by the liberal economist Nicolas Bouzou, to quantify its “economic footprint”. Shortly before submitting about twenty resolutions to the vote of its shareholders, the group thus broadcast a short video of Mr. Bouzou exposing the key figures of the group to 64 billion euros. And its communication department then hastened to transmit this short study to the press.
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