Stéphane Bianchi succeeds Toni Belloni as group managing director

LVMH has made a major change at the top. Toni Belloni, LVMH’s group managing director and chairman of the executive committee, is retiring after over 23 years with the world’s number-one luxury group. He will be replaced by Stéphane Bianchi, who has been in charge of LVMH’s Watches & Jewellery division since 2020. Belloni will formally step down from his role following the group’s AGM, scheduled on April 18.

Belloni, 69, has been a key senior executive for LVMH. He has been directly involved in running the group for over two decades, playing a role in all LVMH’s most important deals alongside Bernard Arnault. Belloni has been preparing his retirement for some time, and will retain an operational role at LVMH: he will be in charge of strategic missions for Bernard Arnault, and will be appointed president of LVMH Italy, as the group stated in a press release.

Belloni is currently a member of the group’s board of directors (a post he will step down from after April 18), while this isn’t the case for Bianchi, who will take over all of Belloni’s operational responsibilities. “As a result, [Bianchi] will chair the Group’s Executive Committee and exercise, alongside Bernard Arnault, the strategic and operational supervision of the Group’s Maisons. He will also oversee the Presidents of the Regions and the Group’s Digital and Data transformation,” stated LVMH.

“Since joining the Group, Stéphane Bianchi has demonstrated rare leadership and management qualities, while immersing himself in the Group’s entrepreneurial and family culture,” said Arnault, who thanked Belloni very warmly for “his exceptional contribution over the last few years.”

“An essential partner”

“Toni has been a major contributor to the success of LVMH. Inspiring, curious and unfailingly loyal, he has participated in all our acquisitions in recent years, and has supported the growth of the Group and its teams with agility and pragmatism. His vision of luxury, of the markets, and his work with our staff have been considerable assets. Toni has been an essential partner for me and a very important member of the LVMH family,” said Arnault.

Belloni was born in Italy and has a degree in economics from the University of Pavia. He has worked at consumer goods multinational Procter & Gamble, initially in the marketing department, and was named president of its European subsidiary in 1999. In 2001, he joined LVMH as group managing director.

Bianchi, 59, joined LVMH in 2018 to oversee the group’s watch brands. He took direct control of Tag Heuer, a role he handed over to Frédéric Arnault, Bernard Arnault’s fourth son (who was put in charge of the group’s new Watches division in January), while also overseeing Hublot and Zenith.

Two years later, he took overall charge of the Watches & Jewellery division, adding to his remit French jewellery brands Chaumet and Fred, and assumed further responsibilities in 2021, when he was put in charge also of Bulgari, and became a member of the group’s executive committee.

A graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, Bianchi started out as a consultant at Arthur Andersen. He spent most of his career with the Yves Rocher group, notably at childrenswear label Petit Bateau, of which he was CEO from 2005 to 2009, and at Yves Rocher, of which he was the CEO between 1998 and 2015. Bianchi is also a member of the board of directors of Swiss group Maus Frères.

LVMH has also announced that, on April 18, the board of directors will be asked to appoint Wei Sun Christianson as a director. She is a graduate of Amherst College and of the Columbia University Law School, and an attorney at the New York bar. She began her legal career at law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, and later joined the Securities and Finance Commission of Hong Kong as a director. Christianson was later president and country manager China at Credit Suisse First Boston, then president of Citigroup Global Markets (Asia) Ltd China, and finally she was appointed CEO China and Co-CEO Asia Pacific at US investment bank Morgan Stanley, where she worked for nearly 20 years.

It is worth reminding that, in February, LVMH announced it intends to co-opt two of Bernard Arnault’s sons, Alexandre and Frédéric, to the board of directors. Recently, the group has made another key change to its top hierarchy. Michael Burke, an adviser to Bernard Arnault since 2023 after a 10-year stint as CEO of Louis Vuitton, has assumed the CEO role at LVMH Fashion Group, overseeing several of the group’s fashion labels. He has succeeded Sidney Toledano, who stepped down from the group’s executive committee and has been named adviser to Bernard Arnault.