Alain Chevalier, one of the two founders of LVMH, is dead

Alain Chevalier, one of the two founders of the world leader in luxury LVMH, died at 87, announced Sunday the Elysee. This captain of industry has made a champagne house, married to the Louis Vuitton company, an international group turned to the upscale.

Mr. Knight "Put his intelligence and his talent at the service of politics and industry, contributing by his vision and his determination to install France in the first place in the field of luxury", said in a statement the Presidency of the Republic, which welcomes in him a "Visionary man".

The French luxury giant, now composed of 70 houses employing 150,000 people worldwide, has welcomed " Memory " a "Big industrialist" in a message sent to Agence France Presse.

Born August 16, 1931 in Algiers, where his family is installed since 1880, this "Blackfoot of Algeria, remained faithful to the memory of his native land" according to the Elysée, studied law and political science before joining ENA (promotion " Vauban "), from where he graduates in 1959. Auditor at the Court of Auditors, he held various positions in ministries (for Algerian affairs, national education, industry) before leaving the administration to launch in the private.

"We had the" Baraka ""

In 1970, he took the general direction of Moët et Chandon, then the first French champagne group, with a goal: to gradually transform this old house in Reims into a luxury goods company with a global vocation. With its president Robert de Voguë, "Things went very fast, we had the "baraka" ", he will say in 1974 in everyday life dawn. In 1987, to counter a possible takeover bid on the company, which became Moët Hennessy, he merged with another luxury giant, Louis Vuitton, then chaired by Henry Racamier, who died in 2003.

But this marriage sounds the end of career for this pure manager. Indeed, Alain Chevalier has never owned any action, either at Moët or later at LVMH. Absent in the capital of LVMH, he failed to stop the progress of Bernard Arnault, who gradually acquired large parts of the company, until becoming the largest shareholder.

From 1979 to 1981, he sits at the CNPF, the ancestor of the Medef, but refuses to take the head of the French employers, just as he said no in 1986 to the post of Minister of Industry that offers him Jacques Chirac, his clbadmate to ENA. In his notebook dated Saturday, the Figaro states that the death took place on 1^st November at his home in Megève (Haute-Savoie). His funeral will be celebrated Wednesday afternoon at the Basilica of St. Clotilde in Paris, says the family.