Louis Vuitton is in talks to buy Tiffany

Concern Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) of the French billionaire Bernard Arnaud made an offer to purchase the American Tiffany, writes Bloomberg. If the deal takes place, it will become the largest for Arno in a few years – the market value of Tiffany is almost $ 12 billion.

An offer from LVMH was received by Tiffany in October, Bloomberg writes. An American company is studying it; it is still unknown whether it will agree to the deal, sources say. Over the week of October 18–25, Tiffany shares on the New York Stock Exchange rose 11.3%. The company’s capitalization on Friday trades amounted to $ 11.9 billion.

Jewellery and watches are the slowest growing part of Bernard Arnault’s empire. In the last 9 months, sales in this segment grew by only 4% compared with an 18% growth in the segment of clothing and leather products (led by LV bags) and 8% in the perfumery segment.

• Richemont’s rival jewellery maker, the Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels brands, is doing better – in fiscal 2018, its sales in this category grew by more than 10% and net profit doubled.
• The jewellery segment is also growing rapidly with archivist LVMH in the struggle for the global luxury market – the Kering group of the Pino family. In the last quarterly report, Kering separately noted a 19% increase in the segment that includes the jewellery business and explained that the excellent contribution was made by the excellent performance of the Boucheron luxury brand and the good performance of the budget brands Pomellato and Dodo.
• Tiffany has undergone reforms in the last two years – Alessandro Bololo, the new CEO of the company, previously managing the Diesel brand, has changed the company’s marketing focus in favour of younger customers. Last week, Bololo announced that Tiffany would open more stores in China – due to the weakening of the renminbi, the Chinese began to spend more at home. Since December 2018, Tiffany shares have risen 31%.

Buying a brand that is popular in the US will help LVMH diversify the risks of the effects of a trade war between China and the United States. Over the past few years, the concern’s luxury business has grown at the expense of the Chinese audience. So far, trade wars have not affected LVMH’s business – in the last quarter, the company showed sales growth of 19%, higher than analysts’ expectations.