Billionaire Bernard Arnault appoints his daughter to run Dior | luxury goods sector

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Bernard Arnault, the richest person in the world, has appointed his daughter Delphine to run Christian Dior, the second largest brand in luxury goods empire LVMH.

Arnault, 73, is the CEO, president and majority shareholder of the group, which owns a wide range of high-end companies including Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Givenchy, Kering and Moet Hennessy.

On Wednesday he announced that his eldest daughter would become CEO and chairman of Dior as part of the €382bn (£337bn) shake-up of the group.

Delphine Arnault, Executive Vice President of Louis Vuitton in charge of its product activities, will take over the new position from February 1.

The 47-year-old joined the family business in 2000 after two years at management consultancy McKinsey and studied at the London School of Economics. She joined LVMH’s board of directors in 2003 – becoming the first woman and youngest person to serve on it.

Her father said: “Under Delphine’s leadership, desirability for Louis Vuitton products has advanced exponentially, enabling the brand to regularly set new sales records. Her deep insights and unparalleled experience will be crucial assets in driving Christian Dior’s continued development.”

The appointment marks a return to the brand for which Arnault first worked in 2001, where she began working on shoes before rising to Deputy General Manager and working directly with Dior’s then Creative Director, John Galliano.

She has been credited with downplaying Galliano’s racist and anti-Semitic fallout on people in a Paris bar in 2011 that led to his dismissal and conviction for racism and anti-Semitism.

Arnault said she wasn’t heavily exposed to family brands or vast wealth as a child, but she does remember getting a brown Louis Vuitton Noé bag (now sold at £1,160) for her 18th birthday and attending her first lavish party when she was 21 .

“I remember very well the celebration of 100 years, in 1996,” she told the Financial Times in 2014. “There was a big party and at the top of the room Naomi Campbell was arriving on stage on a giraffe.”

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Last month, Bernard Arnault appointed his son Antoine as CEO and president of Christian Dior SE, the holding company that controls 41% of the capital and 56% of the voting rights in the LVMH group.

All five of his children now hold senior positions in the French company. They may have a while to wait to take over the family business, as last year LVMH changed company regulations to allow the chief executive to continue running the company until the age of 80, up from 75 previously.

Bernard Arnault last month overtook Elon Musk to become the richest person in the world, with an estimated fortune of $178 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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