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>>> OpenAI Ads Launch: Key Points & Competitive Differentiation

OpenAI Ads Launch: Key Points & Competitive Differentiation

Main Points:

Launch in early February with CPM (cost-per-view) pricing model, not the traditional cost-per-click
Initial commitments under $1M from select advertisers during trial period
Self-service ad buying coming soon but not yet available
~900M weekly active users on ChatGPT (free + paid tiers)
Revenue target: $2B this year, ~$11B next year from ads and shopping features
Already partnered with DoorDash, Walmart, Spotify, Zillow, Shopify for integrations

vs. Google (& Amazon):

Aspect	OpenAI	Google
Pricing Model	CPM (views)	CPC (clicks)
Ad Context	Conversational/personalized chat	Search results pages
User Intent	Real-time problem-solving in dialogue	Explicit search queries
Ad Placement	Native within conversation	Separate ad slots
Scale	900M WAU	8.5B+ monthly searches
Advertiser Control	Limited (managed by OpenAI initially)	Extensive (self-service)

The Strategic Play: OpenAI's CPM model mirrors Meta's social approach—betting that the intimate, personalized nature of ChatGPT conversations makes ads more effective than Google's anonymous search clicks. Early data suggests brands losing traffic to AI still maintain revenue, implying remaining visitors are higher-intent buyers. This could justify premium CPM rates if conversion rates exceed traditional search ads.

The Information : OpenAI Lines Up Advertisers, Reveals Key Details Ahead of Ads

OpenAI Lines Up Advertisers, Reveals Key Details Ahead of Ads Launch

The Takeaway

OpenAI to launch chatbot ads in February, charging based on ad views.
Initial advertisers asked to commit under $1 million; self-service ad buying is planned.
Ad push aims to boost revenue amid OpenAI fundraising effort.

OpenAI has started offering its new chatbot ads to dozens of advertisers, according to two people familiar with the matter. To start off, the company is charging on the basis of ad views as opposed to per-ad clicks that are typical at large sellers of search ads like Google and Amazon, the people said.

OpenAI is asking that small pool of advertisers for less than $1 million in spending commitments each over a several week trial period, with ads launching in early February, the people said. The company does not yet offer technology for advertisers to easily buy ads themselves, but is working on getting self-service ads up and running, the people said. While OpenAI announced last week it would start testing ads in ChatGPT, it did not reveal the pricing details.

The tightly managed rollout comes as OpenAI is trying to grow revenue from ads and shopping without alienating people who might find chatbot ads intrusive or distasteful. Quickly building an ad business could strengthen OpenAI’s pitch as it tries to raise as much as $100 billion from investors, an unprecedented amount for a private company.

Advertisers and agency executives said they have been intrigued by the prospect of buying ads that appear in ChatGPT, thanks to weekly active users of about 900 million and because the personalized nature of user chats could make ads more effective.

OpenAI last week gave examples of what the ads could look like, such as an ad showing a particular sauce brand when a user looks up a recipe. The company said it will show ads to U.S. users of the free version of ChatGPT as well as to those paying $8 per month, a tier the company just added in the U.S. It said ads would appear within weeks.

Still, the company didn’t explain the details of how ChatGPT ads would be priced and sold, or how soon they would be widely available to buyers, which many advertisers had been keen to learn. And behind the scenes, it had largely kept a lid on details to advertisers. Five people working on buying ads at major ad agencies said they’d been reaching out to OpenAI about ads ahead of the Friday announcement, but hadn’t heard any response.

While OpenAI is starting by charging on the basis of views, the company may change this approach after it begins testing, said one of the people. Major search advertising companies like Amazon and Google generally sell ads on a cost per click model, charging for ads based on whether the user clicks on the ad. Social media firms like Meta charge on the cost per impression basis that OpenAI is using.

Which model will be the most lucrative approach for chatbot ads is something of an open question as the rise of conversational AI changes how people interact with the broader internet. Brands that noticed traffic declines in the past year haven’t resulted in declines in revenue, The Information previously reported, suggesting the people who are still visiting after researching using AI could be more likely to make a purchase.

OpenAI had previously told investors it would generate about $2 billion this year and nearly $11 billion next year from new products from non-paying users, such as ad and shopping revenue. But even if OpenAI opens the ad sales up more broadly, advertisers typically start testing ads in small amounts before they reallocate significant parts of their budgets to new ad types.

It is not clear which advertisers OpenAI has been targeting for its launch. Separate from ads, OpenAI has already partnered with large brands such as food delivery company DoorDash and Walmart on enabling shopping features. Spotify and Zillow also partnered with OpenAI to enable users to use the apps’ features directly in ChatGPT.

OpenAI has also enlisted Shopify, which sells software to millions of online shops including brands like Away and Glossier, to support the ChatGPT checkout feature the company announced in September.

OpenAI’s ad effort is overseen by CEO of Applications Fidji Simo, according to one of the people. Simo is a former OpenAI board member who was the CEO of Instacart and previously an executive at Facebook. Applications CTO Vijaye Raji leads a team responsible for the ads effort, and he works closely with ChatGPT head Nick Turley, said the person.

Financial News London : Where have Eisler's portfolio managers gone?

Where have Eisler's portfolio managers gone?

Edward Eisler with his wife, Maryam, in 2015. A decade later, his hedge fund was preparing to close its doors.

From multi-strategy hedge funds to macro giants, some of Eisler Capital's most-experienced portfolio managers have found new homes within six months of the firm's closure.

Balyasny, Millennium, Brevan Howard and Verition are among those hiring talent from the crisis-hit hedge fund amid a growing talent war in the $5tn industry.

Balyasny hired former Eisler Capital portfolio manager Alexander Alekseev as a money manager in September. The firm also recruited ex-Eisler money managers Nikolaos Rapanos and Akshat Shrivastava in December.

Brevan Howard has also grabbed multiple Eisler portfolio managers in the past few months, including Kumar Velayudham in November, Alberto Fabbri in December and Benjamin Spielman in January.

Eisler portfolio manager New firm Akshat Shrivastava Balyasny Puneet Sethi Millennium Yves Masselin Verition Benjamin Spielman Brevan Howard Tim Hayes Hartree Alberto Fabbri Brevan Howard Panos Yiasoumi BlueCrest Nikolaos Rapanos Balyasny Kumar Velayudham Brevan Howard Amar Bhachoo Peel Hunt Alexander Alekseev Balyasny Matt Goldman Verition David Fine ExodusPoint Abhishek Ghose Graham

"Eisler hired very strong talent, so the portfolio managers who secured seats were always going to land well. The situation simply accelerated the process," said Colin McGhee, founder and managing director at hedge fund recruitment firm Paragon Alpha.

Eisler Capital collapsed last year amid rising costs, poor performance and a fierce talent war among multi-strategy hedge funds.

"The challenge of attracting and retaining experienced money managers capable of deploying capital at scale within a cost structure acceptable to investors has grown significantly," founder Ed Eisler said in a letter in September.

Hedge fund recruiters said that Eisler's portfolio managers started their job hunt months before the collapse.

"Eisler money managers were talking to other funds since March. They all saw the writing on the wall," said a London-based headhunter. "Many had seats lined up already and that's why they found new homes quicker than many expected."

"Most of the portfolio managers were well prepared in terms of job search," a Dubai-based recruiter said.

Some portfolio managers had worked their notice periods well before the collapse. Others were bound to long non-compete agreements, however.

Eisler imposed a 30% bonus cut on traders who wanted to leave immediately, Bloomberg reported in October. However, the hedge fund waived non-competes for some senior money managers and gave them a year's severance pay.

"I personally faced no issues at Eisler. They were very good to me when I left," said a portfolio manager who has now joined a bank to run a trading strategy.

Hedge funds are known for imposing non-competes ranging from six months to over two years.

"To have experienced portfolio managers in the market ready to trade immediately without lengthy non-competes is a pretty rare occasion. That's what happened after Eisler's collapse," said a UAE-based recruiter.

The availability of Eisler's portfolio managers came at an opportune time for rivals. Hedge funds gained 12.6% on average in 2025, their best performance since 2009, according to HFR.

"This all happened at a perfect moment, with the macro sector very much on fire. In that environment, firms were already looking to double down on proven strategy experts -- this just made it easier to act decisively, " McGhee said.

Other Eisler names who joined multi-strategy firms in recent months include Matt Goldman, who left Eisler last year to join Verition as a money manager. Eisler portfolio manager Puneet Sethi joined Millennium in January.

"Nobody likes to see a firm close, but unfortunately, these things do happen in our industry. The most important point is that high-quality portfolio managers with real track records remain highly employable, and strong platforms are always ready to back talent when the timing and structure align," McGhee said.

FT : World Economic Forum weighs moving flagship event from Davos

World Economic Forum weighs moving flagship event from Davos

Organisation’s executives including chair Larry Fink discuss future of annual shindig for political and business elites

Senior executives at the World Economic Forum are weighing whether the organisation’s flagship annual meeting needs to change location, fearing the event has outgrown its traditional Alpine venue in Davos.

Larry Fink, BlackRock chair and interim co-chair of the WEF’s governing board, has privately discussed options including moving the summit permanently from Davos or using venues on a rotational basis. Among the locations discussed were Detroit and Dublin.

Fink wants to reshape the forum, which has been widely criticised as too elitist and out of touch, saying access should extend beyond the political and business leaders who usually attend its events, according to four people familiar with the talks.

The WEF should “start doing something new: showing up — and listening — in the places where the modern world is actually built”, Fink said in a blog post on Monday. “Davos, yes. But also places like Detroit and Dublin — and cities like Jakarta and Buenos Aires.”

While the WEF’s leadership continues to reaffirm Davos, the Swiss ski resort that has hosted the annual meeting for nearly six decades, as the event’s spiritual and practical home, there had also been internal acknowledgment of the setting’s increasing logistical and strategic challenges, two of the people added.

The WEF “has outgrown” its capacity, said one senior executive who waited in traffic for three and a half hours to enter the small skiing village for this week’s shindig.

The debate over the location of the global gathering comes as the forum has evolved far beyond its early identity as a club for European management elites.

Now the five-day summit regularly attracts tens of thousands of participants — both official invitees, including heads of state and executives from business and civil society, as well as the informal “houses” hosted by governments, companies and lobbying groups along Davos’s promenade and side streets.

“It has become a victim of its own success,” said one person familiar with the conversations.

Accommodation shortages, security costs and the limited physical infrastructure — a record attendance has already been reported for the current event — have been acknowledged by WEF officials as problematic.

US President Donald Trump’s arrival on Wednesday is expected to further complicate the logistical challenges surrounding the summit.

“It is important to the Swiss government that the WEF retains strong ties to Switzerland,” one of the people said, who added that keeping it in Europe was a priority for many senior forum executives.

The discussions coincide with senior leadership changes at the WEF, with Fink and Roche vice-chair André Hoffmann stepping in as interim chairs of the governing board in August.

WEF founder Klaus Schwab stepped down in April amid whistleblower allegations about financial misconduct and other governance problems. Last year’s investigation cleared Schwab of misconduct, finding no material wrongdoing or criminal conduct but some “irregularities”.

But the saga forced a new page in the forum’s history, which has prompted the interim management to consider its future plans amid criticism it has lost relevance and caters too much to the elite.

It is not the first time relocating the forum’s annual meetings has been suggested, while Schwab had also looked extensively at relocating the forum’s headquarters to Dubai several years ago.

Officially, the forum remains supportive of Davos. WEF directors have publicly stressed the historical significance of the Alpine location, which also brings in crucial tourism revenue and investment. The Swiss government and some of its leading companies would also be likely to resist any move to relocate.

“The Swiss would be very against a relocation: that will create hurdles,” a WEF official said, adding that any move “is not definite”.

BlackRock and WEF did not respond to requests for comment.

FT : Republicans begin to push back against Donald Trump’s pursuit of Greenland

Republicans begin to push back against Donald Trump’s pursuit of Greenland

Party may vote to block any military action as it seeks to defuse growing rift with allies over the Arctic territory

Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive campaign to take control of Greenland has attracted sharp rebukes from Republican lawmakers, raising the possibility that Congress will try to rein in the president’s territorial ambitions.

At least one Republican lawmaker has publicly suggested that if Trump were to use military force to seize the Danish territory, it would be an impeachable offence — and spell the end of his presidency.

Several others have said they expect a war powers resolution, which would prevent the president from deploying troops to Greenland without congressional approval, to garner the backing of the majority of lawmakers in the coming weeks.

The Republican Party controls both chambers of Congress but has done little to curtail Trump after he has pushed the boundaries of presidential power at their expense over the past year.

A war powers resolution intended to limit further military action in Venezuela failed last week after Trump successfully pressed two Republican lawmakers to change their votes.

But the chorus of criticism from within the party over Greenland is one of the first major signals that a growing number of Republicans are willing to push back on what they see as presidential over-reach.

At the same time, Democratic lawmakers are weighing ways to censure the president over his threats to slap tariffs on European allies which refuse to bend to his plans to control the territory.

North Carolina Republican senator Thom Tillis on Tuesday said he was trying to “de-escalate” the situation with Greenland. He has shown a renewed willingness to criticise Trump in recent weeks, threatening to hold up approval for the president’s forthcoming nomination for Federal Reserve chair following the justice department’s probe into testimony before Congress by Jay Powell, the central bank’s current head.

“I am not critical of the president. I am critical of the bad advice he is getting on Greenland,” Tillis told CNBC, adding that “kinetic action or sort of increase in military presence” would trigger a war powers resolution supported by the majority of Senate Republicans.

“I think we could easily get veto-proof majorities,” Tillis added, suggesting at least two-thirds of the 100-member Senate would sign on.

Kentucky Republican senator Rand Paul echoed his comments, telling NBC News at the weekend he had heard of “no Republican support” for a military invasion of Greenland, adding: “Even the most hawkish members of our caucus have said they won’t support that.”

Tillis was speaking on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, days after joining a bipartisan delegation of US lawmakers on a trip to Denmark to meet Danish officials and their counterparts from Greenland.

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski was the only other Republican besides Tillis on the trip to Copenhagen. But she said after meeting Danish and Greenlandic officials that many more members of the party shared her concerns over the president’s actions.

“Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset,” Murkowski said. “I don’t think that the absence of Republicans [in Denmark] is because they don’t care about this issue.”

Murkowski last week proposed legislation with Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire that would prevent the US military occupying or annexing Nato territories, including Greenland. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support.

House Republican Don Bacon of Nebraska has been among the loudest critics of Trump’s Greenland policy. He also insisted a silent majority of lawmakers in the president’s party is prepared to try to block any military action on the Arctic island.

“Most Republicans know this is immoral and wrong and we’re going to stand up against it,” the Nebraska lawmaker told CNN at the weekend.

Bacon, who is not seeking re-election in this November’s midterms, last week told a local newspaper in Omaha that the president’s approach to Greenland was “utter buffoonery” and that an invasion would be the “end of his presidency”.

“The off-ramp is realising Republicans aren’t going to tolerate this and he’s going to have to back off,” Bacon added. “[Trump] hates being told no, but in this case, I think Republicans need to be firm.”

Bacon has also criticised the president’s threat to hit European countries with fresh tariffs of 10 per cent from next month until they agree to support his ambition to acquire Greenland, calling on Congress to “reclaim tariff authorities”.

Bacon on Tuesday said “most Americans disagree with the president’s heavy-handedness”, adding: “He is threatening Nato members, which is shameful.”

Despite a Supreme Court ruling pending on whether Trump has the authority to impose sweeping tariffs, lawmakers have separately proposed legislation to curb the president’s latest trade threats.

Peter Welch, a Democratic senator from Vermont who also joined the US delegation in Copenhagen, on Tuesday said he would introduce a resolution next week forcing a vote in the Senate to prohibit the president’s use of tariffs to punish Nato allies. It remains unclear how many Republican lawmakers would back the effort.

“This is a dead-end confrontation that will only do harm to us, to Nato and our standing in the world,” Welch said. “We stand for self-determination. We stand for sovereignty. And President Trump is challenging that in a way that’s going to be very harmful.”

Opinion polls suggest Trump’s plans to acquire Greenland — either through purchase or military force — are exceedingly unpopular with the American public. A CNN survey last week found just 25 per cent of US adults were in favour of the president’s attempt to control the territory. Republicans were evenly split, with just half saying they supported the idea.

Still, a handful of the president’s allies have remained vocal in their support for Trump’s tactics.

Addressing a joint session of the UK parliament in London on Tuesday, US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said it was his “mission” to “encourage our friends and help to calm the waters, so to speak”.

In a nearly 30-minute speech, Johnson, the most powerful member of the US Congress, did not mention Greenland by name. But he invoked past co-operation between the US and UK as he called on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and European leaders to embrace Trump’s vision.

“We’ve always been able to work through our differences calmly as friends. We will continue to do that,” Johnson said. “Let us look to agreement, continue our dialogue and find a resolution, just as we always have in the past.”

But he added Trump was “taking seriously the modern and dynamic threats that China and Russia pose to our global security, especially . . . as it relates to the Arctic”, and warned against inaction.

“While we can have thoughtful debate . . . among our friends about how best to counter these threats, we all certainly agree they must be countered,” Johnson said. “We ignore these threats at our peril.”

FT : Private equity giant Thoma Bravo eyes software deals as shares fall

Private equity giant Thoma Bravo eyes software deals as shares fall

Firm’s co-founder Orlando Bravo tells FT that sector sell-off is creating a ‘huge buying opportunity’

Private equity giant Thoma Bravo is seeking to capitalise on the recent sell-off in software stocks, preparing what could be a wave of large takeovers.

The plunge in software valuations, driven by fear of an existential threat from artificial intelligence, is creating a “huge buying opportunity,” Orlando Bravo, the firm’s co-founder, told the FT in an interview at the kick-off for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He said the recent correction in the sector is an overreaction by investors worried that big businesses will use AI tools to replace traditional software services. The US-based group is the sector’s largest and most prolific private equity dealmaker, managing over $180bn, and recently raised a $24.3bn fund for software deals.

Bravo’s comments come after a plunge in software valuations in recent weeks. Software is one of the US stock market’s worst-performing sectors so far this year, with an index tracking the group down about 7 per cent over the past three weeks.

Microsoft, Meta and Oracle have fallen 4.2 per cent, 7 per cent and 7.4 per cent, respectively, over the same period, while Salesforce and Adobe have both dropped by about 12 per cent.

The PE firm, which last year struck a $12.3bn deal to take HR software giant Dayforce private, believes specialised software companies will be insulated from AI disruption if they are market leaders in specific processes, such as cyber security or payroll technologies.

“Software is not at all about the code or about the technology. Software is about your domain knowledge,” said Bravo. “Most software companies know a specific vertical, a specific process, a specific function so well that there are three to five companies in the world that know it, and about 20 individuals in the world that really, really know it. That is the franchise. That is the value. That is what you cannot replicate.”

Bravo said companies trying to replace these software tools with their own internal AI capabilities may uncover some savings but struggle to maintain their IT departments, making it unappealing to replace legacy software systems.

“Nobody’s going to replace payroll with AI. Payroll has to be right. There are some planning functions that you will not replace with AI,” he said.

Bravo’s comments come as other large private capital groups have grown increasingly cautious on software deals due to AI risks.

The FT reported last year that Apollo Global cut its exposure to software companies and even shorted some of their debts over AI fears. Blackstone president Jonathan Gray told the FT that assessing AI risks on new investments has become the top priority of the group, which has $1.2tn in assets.

Still, Bravo acknowledged some software companies without specialisation were “absolutely vulnerable” to disruption.

He also said some public software companies had become “unbuyable” due to their excessive stock compensation, which would prevent PE buyers from paying acceptable prices to strike takeovers given that the stock grants would have to be paid for in cash.

While Bravo has maintained his optimism about the health of the sector, an area of explosive growth in private markets over the past decade, the PE firm has not been immune from challenges.

Its $6.4bn takeover of customer service software company Medallia has soured in part due to AI-related issues. Bravo has also been bullish on software companies in most environments, including during a pandemic-era surge in valuations.

In 2021, Bravo said it was “irresponsible, almost” to retrench from making new investments because of valuation fears. “Good luck in sitting on cash and waiting for the market to get cheap,” he said.

Within months of Bravo’s comments, the Federal Reserve’s swift increase in interest rates caused tech valuations to plunge. That year, Thoma Bravo struck a wave of takeovers at multiples that many dealmakers and advisers now believe were too high.

FT : Novogratz’s Galaxy to launch $100mn crypto hedge fund

Novogratz’s Galaxy to launch $100mn crypto hedge fund

Billionaire’s firm plans portfolio to profit from rising and falling prices, following sharp sell-off in digital assets sector

US billionaire Mike Novogratz’s cryptocurrency group Galaxy is planning to launch a $100mn hedge fund, as it seeks to profit in a digital assets sector that has recently suffered a sharp sell-off.

Galaxy, which oversees $17bn worth of digital assets, said the new fund will launch in the first quarter of this year and be able to bet on rising and falling prices. It will invest up to 30 per cent of its assets in crypto tokens and the rest in financial services stocks that it believes will be affected by changes in digital asset technologies and laws.

It has received $100mn in investment from family offices, high-net-worth investors and some larger institutions, according to people familiar with the matter, but may launch with more commitments. Galaxy said it is making a seed investment in the fund but declined to say how much.

The launch comes after a 28 per cent fall in the price of bitcoin, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, since its peak in October. That leaves it well below where it stood when Donald Trump, who has vowed to make the US the “crypto capital of the world”, became US president in January last year.

The price of bitcoin has dropped 5 per cent this week and is trading around $90,000 after Trump threatened to slap tariffs on European countries that do not support his seizure of Greenland.

“The ‘up only’ phase of this cycle is potentially coming to an end,” Joe Armao, head of the fund, told the FT, but added that he remains bullish on bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies such as ETH and Solana.

Bitcoin “can’t be ignored this year in a backdrop of further [Federal Reserve interest rate] cuts, assuming equity markets and gold stay healthy”, he said.

Novogratz launched Galaxy, which runs crypto investment banking and asset management businesses, nine years ago. He had initially planned it as a hedge fund but later changed tack, blaming market conditions and saying at the time that “emotionally, it didn’t feel right”. The firm made $505mn in profits in the third quarter of 2025.

Armao said the fund can profit from finding “winning and losing companies”, adding that “you can play disrupters, winning and losing themes across financial services”.

A slew of crypto companies including stablecoin issuer Circle and exchange Gemini went public last year, while globally hundreds of so-called digital asset treasury companies listed.

Armao also pointed to banks, payment companies, financial software and other financial services groups that he said will potentially be disrupted by digital asset technologies and rules, as well as the impact of AI.

“There are major payments companies [such as] Fiserv down 50 per cent last year . . . data and analytics and ratings companies that have sold off 30 per cent in a quarter on AI fear. The whole sector is undergoing meaningful change and you’re seeing that in stock prices,” Armao said.

FT : Fired Moët Hennessy worker acquitted of defamation

Fired Moët Hennessy worker acquitted of defamation

Paris judge rejects ‘frivolous’ lawsuit by LVMH drinks division against woman who alleged sexual harassment

fired Moët Hennessy employee who wrote on social media alleging discrimination and mismanagement at the LVMH-owned drinks business has been acquitted of defamation in a Paris court.

The trial, which started in November, pitted professed whistleblower Maria Gasparovic against the €6bn owner of brands from Hennessy cognac and Glenmorangie whisky to Veuve Clicquot and Moët & Chandon champagne.

The court found on Tuesday that Moët Hennessy had failed to demonstrate it had been defamed by Gasparovic’s LinkedIn posts, in which she claimed she had been bullied and sexually harassed at Moët Hennessy before being fired without her allegations being investigated.

The judges also ordered Moët Hennessy to pay her €2,000 in damages for pursuing what they described as a “frivolous” lawsuit intended to “restrict Gasparovic’s freedom of expression”. However, they denied Gasparovic’s request for additional compensation.

“It is clear from these elements that the legal action initiated against Maria Gasparovic by Moët Hennessy was, to say the least, reckless, and that the latter . . . abused its right to take legal action,” the judges wrote in their decision.

Gasparovic’s lawyer Claire Caillou told the FT that Moët Hennessy had sought to “silence” Gasparovic through “a gag order procedure”.

“This motivation is further reinforced by the fact that the court emphasises the considerable financial resources available to Moët Hennessy to silence employees who attempt to denounce the actions of which they are victims in the course of their professional activity,” she added.

Moët Hennessy declined to comment.

Gasparovic is separately suing Moët Hennessy for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and wrongful dismissal in an employment court where she is seeking €1.3mn in damages and compensation. Moët Hennessy denies all allegations and asserts that she was fired for gross misconduct.

Former Moët Hennessy chief operating officer Mark Stead, who is Gasparovic’s partner, was also fired by the company for misconduct, a decision upheld by an employment tribunal in November. Stead will appeal against the decision.

A number of other employees have left Moët Hennessy after making complaints on similar grounds to Gasparovic’s in recent years, according to court documents and reporting by the FT. Moët Hennessy has claimed all dismissals were for legitimate reasons.

The business has undergone a turbulent period in which strategic mis-steps and a weaker global market for alcohol have led to poor performance, and several of its top executives have left. These include Gasparovic’s former boss Jean-Marc Lacave and Philippe Schaus, Moët Hennessy’s chief executive at the time of her employment.

Former LVMH group chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony and Alexandre Arnault, a former Tiffany executive and son of LVMH controlling shareholder Bernard Arnault, have now been put in charge of turning around the luxury group’s worst-performing division.

LVMH will report its 2025 financial results at the end of the month, with revenues at the wine and spirits division expected to be almost 4 per cent down organically on 2024, according to consensus estimates from Visible Alpha.