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Richemont on Friday announced new bosses for luxury watch brands Vacheron Constantin and Jaeger-LeCoultre but more change is afoot. Not only are heads going to roll at the Swiss group’s executive committee. CEO Nicolas Bos is quietly preparing to offload badly performing brands, industry sources and fund managers said.

“Bos has told us that he’s now ready to sell,” the manager of one hedge fund told Miss Tweed on condition of anonymity. Bos told investors a few weeks ago that it was too early to give details. They thought he had in mind some of Richemont’s watch brands, such as Roger Dubuis and Baume & Mercier, which have been struggling to grow for more than a decade now.

“It would send a very positive signal to the market if Richemont was to sell badly performing watch brands, particularly after having secured the sale of YNAP (Yoox-Net-A-Porter),” the hedge fund manager said. In October, Richemont announced a deal to sell the online fashion retailer to its rival Mytheresa, getting rid of a lossmaking business that has been a thorn in its side for years.

Fashion has never been Richemont’s strong suit, but its biggest brand Chloé is doing relatively well, industry sources say. Its ready-to-wear and wholesale revenues are understood to be up. However, bag sales are down in Asia, they said.

As always, Richemont did not reply to an email asking for comment. Like LVMH, the Swiss luxury group is going through an unprecedented generational change at a time when the fashion and luxury industry is battling its worst downturn in decades.

Richemont’s Chairman and controlling shareholder Johann Rupert told Miss Tweed at its annual general shareholders’ (AGM) meeting in September that the group was no longer planning to create a beauty division, backtracking on earlier ambitions to build a bigger presence in that field.

“I think I was wrong in calling it a division – it’s more of a coordinating role,” he said at the AGM about the group’s plans announced a year earlier to create a stand-alone beauty business called Laboratoire de Haute Parfumerie et Beauté. In light of the change of plan, Boet Brinkgreve, who was CEO of that unit and a member of Richemont’s executive committee, is no longer needed. The Dutchman, who had joined from the fragrance and dietary supplements provider DSM Firmenich in Sept. 2023, was ousted several weeks ago, industry sources said. He had been personally hired by Rupert but not fired by him, the sources say.

At LVMH, the same thing happens. You may be hired by the big boss and meet the head of HR, but the day the group decides it’s time for you to go, you don’t get to see either of them for “a thank you and goodbye” or an explanation. Instead, you’re promptly escorted to the door. It’s amazing that this has become routine at groups that claim to be well-wishing and looking after their staff. It’s also bad publicity for future recruits. Richemont and LVMH may ban employees from talking to outsiders, including journalists, but people need to share their pain with others. It’s only human.

Brinkgreve is not the only member of Richemont’s executive committee to be pushed out. Patricia Gandji, the group’s Chief People Officer and CEO of Regions, is next on the list, several industry sources said. Gandji is said to have badly handled exits such as Brinkgreve’s and that of key executives at Cartier such as Mercedes Abramo,who was deputy chief commercial officer at the French jewelry brand.

Abramo was promised a new job at Cartier but after Cartier’s new CEO Louis Ferla was appointed earlier this year, she lost support internally and had no choice but to leave. “Abramo was highly regarded,” one senior industry source noted. “Her departure came as a shock to many people internally.”

Several sources said Abramo was protected by Cyrille Vigneron, Cartier’s former CEO. Since he is no longer in charge, Abramo became vulnerable and out she went. Now it’s the turn of the group’s HR boss Gandji to face the same pressure, as she was also under the now-replaced Vigneron’s protection.

Gandji is said to have hidden several cases of moral harassment at the group and paid one person involved a significant amount of money to keep quiet about it. Alerted by CFO Burkhart Grund, Rupert found out and was furious, sources close to the group said. In the past few weeks, Gandji has already lost several members of her team, including her deputy Thomas Mirman. Mirman did not reply to a request for comment.

In May this year, Rupert appointed as CEO Nicolas Bos, a 53-year-old Frenchman who had successfully developed Van Cleef & Arpels (VCA) for many years and spent more than three decades at the group. Rupert also named new bosses for Richemont’s two biggest brands Cartier and VCA, respectively the aforementioned Ferla, ex-CEO of Vacheron Constantin, and Catherine Rénier, who was CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre. These appointments meant new bosses for these two brands had to be found.

Jérôme Lambert, the group’s former CEO demoted to Chief Operating Officer after Bos’s appointment in May, will be given the executive reins of the luxury watch brand Jaeger-LeCoultre (JLC), Richemont announced this week. This is not exactly a promotion.

Lambert led JLC once before, between 2002 and 2013, and then moved on to Montblanc as CEO. Few people accept going back to doing a job they did 20 years ago; they find it debasing. But not Lambert. The 55-year-old technocratic manager is widely regarded as a “yes man” who does exactly what he is told, people who work with him say. The French-Swiss Richemont veteran has bought himself a nice big house in Cologny, the chic neighborhood just outside downtown Geneva,and is happy to stay on as long as he’s well paid, people who work with him say.

Good luck to Lambert in earning the respect of his troops. It’s clear Richemont needs a new head of human resources and someone who has a better grasp of basic psychology than Gandji. People need to admire their boss. They will not work hard if they are not inspired. That’s particularly the case for people under 35.

To put Lambert in charge of a watch brand like JLC, which needs fresh energy, creativity and a strong new marketing story, looks like a bad move. Lambert is a financier, not an audacious or creative mind. Richemont may feel indebted to Lambert for his loyalty but it could have given him another job. That being said, Richemont staff say Lambert left a good impression when he was CEO of JLC.

JLC is a lovely brand with a rich heritage. It’s best known for its Reverso model with a rotating dial, which is mainly popular in the United States and in Europe. The Reverso has never been big in Asia, where sister brands such as Vacheron Constantin grew tremendously in the past decade but are now suffering from the collapse of demand for luxury watches in China.

As Miss Tweed predicted nearly a year ago, Laurent Perves, then Vacheron Constantin’s chief commercial officer, was named its CEO this week. This is good news as Perves is respected and admired internally.

For most people, the person they work for and report to is more important than the brand itself. Sometimes luxury managers look like pawns in a giant chess game. The shareholders of luxury groups see them as being interchangeable. One day they are at LVMH, the next at rival Richemont or at Kering. They try their luck elsewhere and realize it’s the same toxic, technocratic environment everywhere with little access to the big bosses or shareholders. No luxury brand can be successful without good leadership, without a strong chief they look up to and respect.

Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert is feared internally and respected for his insights into the state of the world and dangers going forward. The 74-year-old South African billionaire was the first luxury leader to predict last year that business would be tough in China and he was right. Rupert has also been preparing his succession. He has anointed the person who will be chairman in his place when the moment comes for him to leave. However, that person’s identity has been kept secret for now. Rupert has also made his family, including his son and two daughters, full shareholders of Richemont through a complex web of different structures. Officially, he and his son Anton are the only shareholders of Financière Rupert, which owns 10 percent of Richemont equity and 51 percent of voting rights. However, above it are other structures in which a wider spread of family members are shareholders.

This confusing scheme was put in place to make a takeover more difficult. Shareholders should be entitled to get more details on this complex structure in the spirit of transparency and best practice in terms of disclosure.