By
Bloomberg
Published
November 27, 2024
L’Oréal SA heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers has seen her fortune decline the most of almost anyone in the world this year, but she’s still investing in French entrepreneurs.
Téthys Invest SAS, the family’s investment firm, plans to acquire a stake of about 13% in Septeo SAS in a deal that values the software supplier used by notaries, lawyers and human resource departments at more than €3 billion ($3.1 billion). Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC will take a similar stake, while private equity firm Hg will retain a majority.
The relatively unknown software firm based near Montpellier is one of a handful of companies to receive backing from Téthys Invest in recent years, almost all of them with deep roots in France and homegrown founders. The investment vehicle partly funded by L’Oréal dividends has stepped up the pace of deals despite a 26% decline this year in the cosmetic company’s stock price.
Bettencourt Meyers, 71, is the biggest single shareholder with an almost 35% stake in the beauty products empire founded by her grandfather. She’s one of a clutch of ultra-rich French citizens whose fortunes grew amid global demand for high-end makeup, clothes and jewellery. But their wealth has declined this year amid a sharp slowdown in China.
The publicity-shy heiress, who was long the world’s richest woman, has seen her net worth drop by $26 billion since the start of the year to $73.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Only LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, 75, who is down almost $40 billion, has lost more among the world’s 500 richest people.
Against this backdrop, Téthys Invest is expanding its portfolio, which now includes stakes in at least 10 companies spanning health care, education, fashion and insurance. All are French except for The Row, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s US-based clothing label, which it invested in earlier this year.
Téthys Invest bills itself as a long-term financial backer of “entrepreneurial projects” and is overseen by Bettencourt Meyers and her husband, Jean-Pierre Meyers, with the help of their two sons, Jean-Victor, 38, and Nicolas, 36. A representative declined to comment.
Since it was created in 2016, Téthys Invest’s deal-making has been gathering pace. It bought into French insurer April Sante Prevoyance in 2023 as part of a group of minority shareholders who came in following the acquisition of a majority stake by KKR & Co.
In 2022, Téthys Invest acquired a stake in decade-old fashion digital retailer Sézane, started by Frenchwoman Morgane Sézalory, which also counts private equity firm General Atlantic as an investor. It has also backed French animal vaccine and drugmaker Ceva Santé Animale and in 2020 raised its investment in Galileo Global Education, a private provider of higher education with 61 schools in 18 countries. It was started by Frenchman Marc-François Mignot-Mahon.
The Bettencourt Meyers clan is also invested in French private hospital operator Elsan and medical diagnostics company Sebia, as well as crop-protection firm M2i and biotech company HTL Biotechnology.