Chapter 580 Bloody family strife
The sun shines down, and the setting sun is like blood.
A sea of lavender flowers looks even more beautiful under the sunset.
The floral fragrance is elegant and refreshing.
The scent of lavender fills the air, making people feel relaxed.
In the sea of flowers, some bees and butterflies were flying among the flowers, adding a sense of vitality.
At the edge of the sea of flowers, a magnificent castle looks peaceful, peaceful and solemn against the setting sun.
This is the Bradstow Lavender Farm, the largest lavender farm in the southern hemisphere that Grace Tourism Group purchased on Stamania Island in Australia.
But now it has a new name, called Grace Lavender Manor.
Time has entered 2008, and the castle in the manor has been built and decorated.
After returning to Australia from India, Barron took his wife and others to the island and stayed in the castle for the first time.
In January, the lavender in the manor is already in bloom, and you can smell the faint fragrance of flowers in the castle, which is refreshing.
It can be said that when you are in this manor, you can easily forget all the things happening in other places in the world and just enjoy the comfortable life here peacefully.
Of course, this is very rare for Barron.
Because even when he was on vacation with his family, many matters regarding his properties needed to be handled through the family office in charge of Wang Wanting, and many of them required Barron to make decisions. .
"Your Highness the Duke, we have made an offer for the L'Oreal shares owned by the Nestlé Group, but they have temporarily rejected our offer..."
"Why?"
"Because according to the agreement signed by Nestlé and L'Oréal in 2004, before 2014, the Nestlé Group's sale of L'Oreal's shares needs to be restricted..."
The reason why he hopes to acquire the shares of L'Oréal Group is that Barron takes a fancy to the group's market in the cosmetics field - although the Gucci-Hermès Group also has some cosmetics businesses, its size, whether in terms of profitability or The scale cannot be compared with the L'Oreal Group.
However, the L'Oreal Group has always been under the control of the Bettencourt family. It is probably impossible to buy the shares of the L'Oreal Group from them - the founder of the group currently controls the shares of the Betancourt family's L'Oreal Group. Lillian Bettencourt, the daughter of Eugene Schueller, became the richest man in France and the richest woman in the world.
So if you want to acquire L'Oréal Group, you can only start from the second largest shareholder of this group, Nestlé Group.
Nestle Group, as everyone knows, is a food manufacturer.
The company, founded in 1867 by Henri Nestle and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is the world's largest food manufacturer.
Nestlé currently has more than 500 factories around the world and 250,000 employees. In 2005, Nestlé's annual sales reached 91 billion Swiss francs, and its net profit also hit a record high, reaching 8 billion Swiss francs.
But why is such a company the second largest shareholder of L'Oréal Group?
There is a story in this...
L'Oréal Group was born in 1907, its founder was Orne Schulaire.
However, after the death of Eugene Schueller, L'Oreal encountered a wave of nationalization of French companies.
In 1972, the French Communist Party and the Republican Party adopted a common government platform and prepared to nationalize most enterprises in order to "break the rule of big capitalists."
In order to avoid the fate of the company being nationalized, Dalle, the president of L'Oreal appointed by Schuler during his lifetime, persuaded Schuler's daughter Liliane Bettencourt (who was also a French political celebrity and a government minister for many years, André L'Oréal) in 1973. Bettencourt's wife) and other major shareholders reorganized the company.
The next year, in 1974, Liliane Betancourt exchanged half of her L'Oréal shares with shares of a non-French company, the Swiss food giant Nestlé, and obtained a 3% stake in the latter.
Later, the Betancourt family and Nestlé Group conducted a number of capital operations on L'Oreal Group. The Betancourt family and Nestlé held 31.0% and 29.6% of the shares of L'Oreal respectively.
Such capital operation not only ensures the independence of L'Oréal, but also allows cross-shareholding to establish closer ties between the two companies, which are increasingly becoming the strongest companies in the world in their respective fields.
For example, in 2003, L'Oreal Group and Nestlé Group established a joint venture company "INNEOV Laboratory". The product of this company is the well-known oral beauty brand "INNEOV".
However, Lillian Bettencourt was born in 1922. By 2004, the elderly Lillian Bettencourt signed a 10-year agreement with Nestlé in order to prevent the transfer of control of L'Oreal.
This agreement stipulates that both parties are not allowed to increase their holdings of L'Oreal shares while Liliane Betancourt is alive and within 6 months after her death. After April 29, 2009, both parties can sell L'Oreal shares, and the other party has the right of first refusal.
Therefore, it is necessary to wait until the agreement is terminated on April 29, 2014, before both parties have the right to freely sell L'Oreal shares.
The reason why Barron is preparing to take action against the L'Oréal Group at this time is because at this time, cracks first appeared within the Bettencourt family.
Just last month, the mother-daughter duo of the Betancourt family, Liliane Bettencourt and her daughter Françoise Bettencourt, were involved in a lawsuit.
Françoise Bettencourt accused her mother of giving away her $1 billion worth of wealth because she was "confused" and mentally unstable.
Liliane Bettencourt refused to accept the diagnosis of mental illness and believed that she had control over her wealth...
It can be said that the inside story of this story is very bloody.
First of all, Lillian Betancourt and her husband have a very happy marriage—among the five richest women in the world selected by Forbes, she is the only one who has not divorced.
Their marriage lasted 52 years until Bettencourt's death last year, in 2007.
The Bettencourt family is a French political family, with many family members serving as councilors, mayors and other positions.
Interestingly, when he was young, Bettencourt once participated in a radical pro-Nazi organization, held regular meetings, and wrote articles in newspapers to promote Nazi ideas.
Schuler, the founder of L'Oréal Group and Liliane Betancourt's father, as his father-in-law, provided funding and a venue for the organization to hold meetings - at L'Oreal's headquarters.
Bettencourt once publicly called Jews "hypocritical Pharisees" in the media.
Until 2001, a German woman sued Schueller, accusing him of buying a house that she knew was a Nazi plunder of Jews—later L'Oréal's German headquarters.
Bettencourt himself has been active in French politics and has served as Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Industry, Culture and Foreign Affairs.
And their daughter Francoise Bettencourt, although she is the legal third-generation heir of the L'Oréal Group, is not active in the business world. Instead, she is more interested in religious research - after studying Judaism for more than ten years. , simply married Meyer, a Jew.
It is worth mentioning that Meyer’s parents both died in Auschwitz...
In addition, the "close friend" accused by her daughter Francoise of accepting her mother's wealth of up to 1 billion US dollars is the 61-year-old photographer Barnier.
He is an old friend of the Bettencourts. This friendship began in 1987. Barnier asked Lillian, who was 65 years old at the time, to appear in his photography and appear on the cover of the magazine. Since then, he has frequently visited Bettencourt. The ancient couple's mansion in Paris was a close friend.
According to media reports, Lillian once hired a plane to fly from the Seychelles to France just to retrieve Barnier's brushes.
Lillian's gift to Barnier began as soon as she met her, and her husband Andre never had any objection to it when he was alive.
After the death of André Bettencourt in 2007, Lillian and Barnier became increasingly close. Her daughter was dissatisfied and took both parties to court directly.
Well, it’s worth mentioning that Barnier and Liliane Bettencourt may not be the “close friends” you think they are, because Barnier has already publicly “came out”...
