Hermès created Europe’s biggest family fortune after spurning ‘revolting’ LVMH
The luxury brand has thrived in large part due to its controlling family’s penchant for doing things in quaint ways that hark back to its nearly two-century heritage.
On a chilly October day in Paris in 2010, Bertrand Puech got an unexpected call on his cellphone from Bernard Arnault, the founder of luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE and one of the world’s richest men. Arnault told Puech, the family patriarch at rival Hermès, that his company had amassed shares in the maker of the iconic Kelly and Birkin bags. The investment was friendly and aimed at offering Hermès strategic and operational help, Arnault would later say.
But to Puech and other Hermès heirs, his objective was clear: Arnault, whose often-ruthless takeovers of storied heritage brands have earned him the moniker “wolf in cashmere”, was out to conquer.
