Rémy Cointreau has named a former L’Oréal and Louis Vuitton executive to head its management team, ending months of speculation over leadership at the French spirits group.
The Paris-based company said Valérie Chapoulaud-Floquet, a luxury specialist, would become chief executive in mid-September.
Her arrival fills the void created at the start of the year when Frédéric Pflanz resigned after fewer than 100 days in the post. His abrupt resignation produced unease at a time when falling sales in China started to hit profits.
The resignation less than a month later of Patrick Piana, chief executive of the group’s Rémy Martin division, added to the uncertainty.
On Tuesday, the group that produces Mount Gay rum and the ultra-premium Louis XIII cognac said that Ms Chapoulaud-Floquet’s arrival marked “a new phase in the development and ambitions of the Rémy Cointreau group”.
Ms Chapoulaud-Floquet spent more than 20 years at L’Oréal, where she worked in Asia, Europe and North America. She joined Louis Vuitton in 2008 where she worked on developing the luxury brand’s market in Taiwan as well as in southern Europe. She then became chief executive of the brand’s Americas region.
Francois Hériard Dubreuil, Rémy chairman, stressed Ms Chapoulaud-Floquet’s “keen knowledge of the luxury sector, and her well-known temperament and charisma”.
Rémy this month said that plummeting sales in China had contributed to a 38.8 per cent fall in operating profit in the year that ended in March.
Like competitors, Rémy has suffered a marked change of fortune in China as the government continues to crack down on so-called “conspicuous spending” on luxury products by its officials.
But the policy U-turn has affected Rémy more than most because of its greater exposure to China, and the fact its sales have been more concentrated in the premium segment of the Chinese spirits market that was in such demand until 2012.
Until the crackdown, the ultra-premium cognac category, which starts at $500 a bottle, accounted for 13 per cent of the Chinese market compared with less than 1 per cent for the UK or the US, according to Bernstein Research.
Cognac makes up about 80 per cent of Rémy’s total operating profit, with China accounting for half of that. Operating profit at Rémy Martin, the cognac division, was €125m in the year to March, an annual fall of 44 per cent.