LVMH has no plans to relocate the luxury conglomerate, said Bernard Arnault, its billionaire chief executive officer, after remarks he made critical of France drew a backlash at home.
Bernard Arnault – ph DM
“I’ve obviously never said we would relocate the LVMH group,” Arnault said in a post on the company’s X account Friday. When he voiced discontent with France at an earnings presentation on Tuesday he only wanted to sound an alarm over tax measures that he deems will be “counter productive,” he added.
“What I said is that the tax measures that are being considered are an incentive to relocate, since they’re a tax on Made in France,” he said.
Arnault said on Tuesday that plans to raise corporate taxes in France are “a great idea to encourage people to relocate,” contrasting the atmosphere in his native country to the optimism he sees in the US following Donald Trump’s election as president.
“There’s a different mood” between the two countries, the billionaire told reporters on the sidelines of LVMH’s annual results, at one point comparing his return to France to a cold shower.
In an interview on RTL radio Friday, Sophie Binet, leader of the French union CGT, likened comments like Arnault’s to a sign that “the rats are leaving the ship.”
Arnault, in his post on Friday, said LVMH is “proud to employ directly and indirectly some 200,000 people in France.”
