The French family behind Hermès is set to pocket over $5B in dividends after four record-breaking years as the luxury brand defies an industry slump, thriving on demand for its high-end leather bags and silk scarves.
AFP
Some 100 heirs to the luxury fortune, who control just over two-thirds of Hermès shares, have benefited from rapidly rising payouts, including this year’s biggest ever. The company reported a jump in fourth-quarter revenue while rivals LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE and Gucci-owner Kering SA recorded declines.
The Hermès family’s wealth is estimated at $213.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, derived from the Paris-listed company whose stock price has more than tripled since the start of 2021, when pandemic lockdowns around the world began driving a surge in luxury shopping. Hermès market capitalization briefly touched €300 billion ($313 billion) after 2024 results were announced on February 14.
While the clan is Europe’s richest, and Hermès has been described as being “in a league of their own” in the luxury sector, LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, 75, remains the wealthiest individual in France, with a fortune of $196.2 billion, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index.
The windfall for the descendants of harness maker Thierry Hermès, who started a workshop in 1837, comes more than a decade after they nearly lost control of the company to Arnault, who had stealthily accumulated a stake through LVMH. It also coincides with moves to diversify some of their expanding wealth away from luxury through the family office Krefeld Invest.
Worker bonus
Hermès intends to pay a dividend of €26 a share for last year—its largest ever—which includes an exceptional cash payout of €10 a share. The plan still needs to be approved by shareholders at an annual meeting on April 30. It would be an increase from the previous year’s dividend of €25 a share—which also included an extra €10 a share—and twice the level paid out for 2022, which itself was nearly two-thirds more than the previous year.
Before the pandemic, the company periodically disbursed special cash dividends of €5 a share, but as revenue has hit records every year, shareholders and employees are benefiting. The company announced a €4,500 bonus for all workers related to last year’s results.
Taking into account the family members’ stake in the company, their total payout for the past four financial years will amount to €5.1 billion. According to the latest earnings statement, even after distributing €2.6 billion to shareholders last year, Hermès International’s net cash position was €12 billion at the end of December.
Asked during the results presentation whether the company would consider using its cash to acquire another brand, Executive Chairman Axel Dumas said, “I can never say never, but it’s not our priority.”
Dumas, 54, a sixth-generation scion who comes from one of three branches of the family, added, “We know how to do Hermès, but I’m not sure we would know how to do something else.”
What remains unclear is who may be benefiting from the dividends stemming from about 6 million shares, now worth roughly €17 billion, linked to Nicolas Puech, Dumas’ octogenarian relative based in Switzerland. Puech has been embroiled in a legal case over the management of his wealth and contends this part of his fortune has disappeared.
–With assistance from Devon Pendleton.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
Heritage menswear label John Smedley has launched its first diffusion line, dubbed JS by John Smedley, for SS25. It brings its 240-year history in British manufacturing and its contemporary take on versatile knitwear to a wider audience and will be exclusively stocked at John Lewis.
Made in England from fully-traceable, high-quality New Zealand Extra Fine Merino Wool, the capsule “has a vibrant and youthful aesthetic, retaining the values of colour and high quality craftsmanship that are hallmarks of the brand”, it said.
While it’s a diffusion line of menswear silhouettes, there’s a unisex edge to the collection of 13 styles featuring shades of blue, pink and green, colour blocked or in bold, statement stripes.
The line features John Smedley’s “most popular pieces reimagined through a contemporary lens”. They’re designed “with a relaxed, boxier fit and colour blocking throughout the collection, as well as unique design details of visible branding knitted into each garment”.
Jess McGuire Dudley, deputy managing director of John Smedley, said: “As a brand we are continually looking to adapt to our customer and the evolving demands of the market. Through the diffusion line we can offer high-quality, fashion-forward styles with sustainable credentials, all designed and made in the UK at mindful price points.”
Stella McCartney has unveiled its summer 2025 campaign starring Myha’la, Alex Consani, Eva Mendes and Raye.
Stella McCartney
And as expected with the eco-friendly label, there are other stars aside from the human celebs. Those famous faces are juxtaposed with doves and “fantastical avians created with AI, inspiring others to see from different perspectives; a bird’s eye view”.
The company said that “with nearly 50% of avian species in decline and 3.4 billion birds harmed or killed for feather down annually, it is a reminder that there could someday be a world where these creatures live only in fantasy if we do not save what we love”.
As that last statement suggests, the campaign is an evolution of the ‘Save What You Love’ manifesto that opened the designer’s summer 25 runway show, a celebration of and call-to-action for birds inspired by author and birdwatcher Jonathan Franzen’s book The End of the End of the Earth.
The campaign also promotes what’s the label’s “most sustainable edit to date”, made with “96% conscious materials”.
So what about the human stars of the campaign, all of whom were shot by Ethan James Green in New York? Myha’la is an actor and advocate for representation in media as well as ending racism and homelessness.
Named Model of the Year at the Fashion Awards 2024, Alex Consani walked the runway show and featured in the Stella McCartney x Adidas Rasant trainer campaign. She’s a voice for inclusivity in fashion and support for trans children.
Actor, model and author Eva Mendes, who was also in the winter campaign, is an advocate for women and children and “uses her entrepreneurial initiatives for good, including a zero-plastic solution to consumer water”.
Award-winning Raye meanwhile “raises her voice for the injustices of the music industry, feminism and the environmental crisis, particularly its outsized impact on women of colour”.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. posted its fastest pace of revenue growth in more than a year, as the Chinese internet pioneer co-founded by Jack Ma takes another step toward a recovery after years of turbulence.
The Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. headquarters in Hangzhou – Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg – Reuters
The company reported better-than-anticipated revenue gains in its two most important divisions: e-commerce and cloud services, which houses its AI endeavors. That hints at a bounce-back in Chinese consumption from post-Covid troughs, and initial success at beating back rivals from ByteDance Ltd. to PDD Holdings Inc. that in recent years eroded its market share. The company’s stock rose as much as 11% after markets opened in New York on Thursday.
Investors may have also been bullish because of Alibaba’s growing determination to compete in artificial intelligence. Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Alibaba will spend more on AI infrastructure over the next three years as it did in the past decade. He went as far as to say that Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, is the company’s “primary objective.”
“This is the kind of opportunity for industry transformation that really only comes about once every several decades,” he told analysts on a conference call. “So when it comes to Alibaba’s AI strategy, our first and foremost goal is to pursue AGI.”
The financial results show Alibaba is already righting a business knocked off-kilter by a government clampdown that began in 2020. It regained its footing after Beijing signaled a pullback in scrutiny in 2023. Joe Tsai and Wu — two of co-founder Jack Ma’s most trusted lieutenants — took the helm that year and refocused investment on AI and e-commerce. On Thursday, Alibaba reported a faster-than-projected 8% rise in sales to 280.2 billion yuan ($38.6 billion) in the December quarter, after cloud services revenue expanded its most on a quarterly basis in about two years.
That division, which houses the company’s AI-related projects and hosts computing power for external clients, grew revenue 13% to $4.3 billion. International commerce sales — driven by overseas marketplaces such as AliExpress and Trendyol — surged 32%.
Alibaba has gained some $100 billion of market value in 2025, though it’s still far from its pre-crackdown peak. Ma himself joined a select group of the biggest names in Chinese technology and business at a televised summit convened this week by Xi Jinping — signifying Alibaba’s return to favor after years in the cold. The gathering featured entrepreneurs across a broad swath of industry, notably from the sphere of artificial intelligence.
“Now that Alibaba has defended its main e-commerce business, and its side AI business is also booming, we could see Alibaba’s results flourish in upcoming quarters,” said Li Chengdong, head of Beijing-based Internet think-tank Haitun. “Their government relationship wasn’t in a good shape in the past few years and that must have led to a huge loss of clients. Now the AI business is finally reviving the group.”
Ma was the highest-profile casualty of Xi’s crackdown on the internet and private sector in 2020, when authorities scuttled the blockbuster initial public offering of Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group Co.
That episode kicked off a yearslong campaign to tighten state control over the economy, rein in the nation’s billionaire class and shift resources toward Xi’s priorities including national security and technological self-sufficiency. Once one of China’s most outspoken entrepreneurs, Ma largely disappeared from public view.
But authorities have taken a less combative approach as China’s economy slowed and companies aligned themselves with Xi’s push for leadership in areas like AI. Alibaba, which operates one of the world’s biggest cloud services platforms, wowed investors this year by making major headway in that arena during the post-ChatGPT era.
“The results show very good progress — a very clear ‘back to basics’ strategy is paying off,” said Jeffrey Towson, partner at TechMoat Consulting.
Since the advent of OpenAI’s chatbot, Alibaba has invested in a clutch of China’s most promising startups, including Moonshot and Zhipu. It prioritized the expansion of the cloud business that underpins AI development, slashing prices to win back the customers that fled during the turbulent years.
It also decided to spend big on AI, joining a race led by Baidu Inc. at the time. DeepSeek’s sudden rise to global prominence last month – a shock to both Silicon Valley and Wall Street — boosted Chinese tech stocks including Alibaba in recent weeks. Since then, Alibaba has unveiled a Qwen model that performed well in official benchmark tests and signaled the company’s growing relevance in the field. Apple Inc. is incorporating Alibaba’s AI technology into Chinese iPhones, a vote of confidence in its prowess.
On Thursday, Wu talked up Alibaba’s aspirations to ride the AI wave and develop AGI — the industry holy grail touted by prominent advocates from OpenAI’s Sam Altman to Masayoshi Son.
But like many of his peers, the Alibaba CEO stopped short of outlining a profitable use case for AI. It should however enhance services throughout the business, while Alibaba itself as an infrastructure provider should benefit, he said.
“We’re still in very early days when we’re talking about the advancement of artificial intelligence technology,” Wu said. “The future business business models and the future ways in which these models will be monetized are not necessarily clear to anybody today.”
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