LVMH’s owners, the Arnault family, are seeking to consolidate control of the shareholding structure of the luxury group.
The board of directors of Christian Dior was informed of a project today (24 September), with a proposal to merge Agache, LVMH’s apex holding company, into Christian Dior while converting Christian Dior into a limited joint-stock partnership.
This conversion would then trigger the filing of a mandatory tender offer on Christian Dior shares, without implementing a squeeze-out – a legal process where a majority shareholder forces remaining minority shareholders to sell their shares for cash.
The merger would be submitted for approval to the governance bodies of the relevant companies, notably an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of Christian Dior, which would be called upon to vote on these transactions at the end of 2026.
This is subject to obtaining waivers to mandatory tender offer situations on Christian Dior and LVMH from the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF).
For the Arnault family, the move will allow them to control within a single company.
Christian Dior said in a company statement: “The tender offer would take place in the first quarter of 2027, subject to the clearance of the AMF, and would not be followed by a squeeze-out.
“Christian Dior shareholders who would choose not to tender their shares in the tender offer would thus remain shareholders of the listed entity resulting from the merger (Agache SCA), which would bring together the controlling stake in LVMH (aggregating the stakes currently held by Agache, Financière Agache and Christian Dior) as well as the other assets received from Agache.”
Cosmetics Business has contacted LVMH for a comment.
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