**Four Journalistic Investigations Put LVMH's Communications Team Under Pressure**
The group's head of external relations, Jean-Charles Trehan, already overwhelmed by the recent uncontrolled media outing of Hélène Mercier-Arnault, now faces a series of investigations set to hit newsstands and bookshops.
The LVMH group, and in particular the family of CEO Bernard Arnault, is about to make front pages at newsstands — and perhaps feature prominently in bookshop displays — before the end of the year. Enough to make the communications teams of the world's leading luxury group decidedly jittery, starting with Jean-Charles Trehan, its powerful head of external relations since 2017.
Thirteen years after *L'Ange exterminateur* by journalist Airy Routier (Albin Michel), the last unauthorised biography of the luxury boss, a new portrait book will be published in autumn, written in English by two Wall Street Journal journalists, Nick Kostov and Stacy Meichtry, and published by St Martin's Press. Over the summer, a six-part series in *Le Monde*, penned by Raphaëlle Bacqué and Vanessa Schneider, will take stock of Bernard Arnault and his group in the midst of a generational transition. Like the 2018 series on Karl Lagerfeld, this one could well give rise to a book in an expanded edition. An investigation in *L'Express* is also planned before the summer. More imminently — just a few days before the AGM on 23 April — *Le Nouvel Obs* will publish its own piece, less than two years after its cover story on "The influential Bernard Arnault" that ran at the end of 2024.
**The Financial Communications Team on Edge Too**
A veritable avalanche, then, for a group accustomed to exercising tight control over what is written about it — leveraging both its position as owner of a significant portion of the financial press (*Les Echos*, *Challenges*, *Boursier.com*, etc.) and its clout as a major advertiser with the magazine press. Jean-Charles Trehan, who operates in the shadow of Antoine Arnault — head of the group's image and the eldest of the Arnault sons — appears increasingly strained in his efforts to keep family rifts under wraps. He had already been completely wrong-footed in February by the peculiar media outing of Hélène Mercier-Arnault.
That operation had allowed the pianist to give her version of the family situation, while also promoting her latest record. It had been organised behind the group's back by Louis Jublin, the personal new impresario of Bernard Arnault's wife (*La Lettre* of 24/02/26 and 27/02/26). In the midst of the communications crisis, Jean-Charles Trehan and LVMH's communications director, Hélène Freyss, politely kept silent, while politicians and comedians were quick to seize on the remarks made by France's first lady of luxury regarding taxes and public spending — and then on the homeless, once the various RTL rushes were leaked by *Le Canard Enchaîné*, *Mediapart* and *Blast*.
The communications teams are not the only ones on edge. CFO Cécile Cabanis is also fielding an ever-growing number of questions from investors and analysts about the CEO's age and succession plans. Together with LVMH's deputy chief executive Stéphane Bianchi, she is bracing for an AGM at which the topic is likely to surface, while the first-quarter results — due to be announced on 13 April — are unlikely to reassure retail shareholders.