|
overview
landmarks
related:
Pearson
|
overview
This note considers the Les Echos publishing group, successively
controlled by the Servan-Schreiber family, Beytout family,
Pearson and Bernard Arnault.
It covers -
introduction
Groupe Les Echos traces its origins to 1908 and encompasses
a range of specialist newspapers - notably the Paris financial
daily Les Échos, a counterpart of the
Wall Street Journal and Financial Times
- along with newsletters and book publishing.
As of 2006 titles included -
- Les
Échos
- Enjeux
Les Echos monthly magazine
- Revue
du Praticien bi-monthly
- Revue
du Praticien Médecine Générale
weekly
- Panorama
du Médecin bi-weekly
- La
Revue du Praticien Gynécologie et Obstétrique
- Les
Archives des Maladies du Coeur et des Vaiseux
-
La Revue Française du Dommage Corporel
At that time Les Échos was selling around
140,000 copies a day
Servan-Schreiber
Les Echos was founded as the monthly Les
Échos de l'Exportation in 1908 and became
a daily in the late 1920s.
The paper initially appeared under the auspices of textile
traders Robert Schreiber and associate Albert Aronson
and became a weekly in 1913. It suspended operation during
the 1914-18, before a reorganisation in 1918 which saw
Schreiber end the relationship with Aronson and establish
a partnership with brother Émile Schreiber (1888-1967)
as Schreiber Frères. During the following decade
the paper gained recognition as France's dominant daily
financial newspaper, with a particular emphasis imports
and exports. Circulation rose to 10,000 and it opened
foreign offices in London, Berlin, Vienna, Bucharest,
Milan, Warsaw and Frankfurt. In 1925 the Schreiber Frères
launched Les Échos des Industries d'Art
and began publishing in other languages, including a quarterly
in English, Spanish, and German and yearlies in Japanese
and Portuguese.
Aryanisation of the press under the Vichy government saw
the Schreibers close the newspaper and transfer assets
to a non-Jewish friend. The younder generation of Schreibers
joined the Maquis, adopting the surname Servan. Emile's
sons Jean-Jacques and Jean-Louis, later prominent journalists,
identified themselves as Servan-Schreiber after 1944.
In that year Les Échos resumed publication,
initially as a bi-weekly and then as a daily.
In 1953 Emile's son Jean-Jacques (1924-2006) and Françoise
Giroud (1916-2003) launched a weekly supplement, L'Express
(initially subtitled Les Échos de Samedi).
Jean-Jacques had worked for Hubert Beuve-Méry at
Le Monde. By late-1955 L'Express
was marginally profitable, after imposing substantial
cirtculation losses and costs on its parent, and in September
1955 became a daily newspaper. That reflected commercial
and personal tensions within the Schreiber/Servan-Schreiber
family, with Les Échos endorsing De Gaulle
(and reflecting Robert's more conservative stance in publishing)
and L'Express boosting Premier Pierre Mendes
France. Ironically, Robert's daughter Marie-Claire (1921-2004)
married Mendes France in 1971).
Defeat of Mendes France in 1956 saw L'Express
return to a weekly format. Robert's son Jean-Claude sought
to rejuvenate Les Échos; Emile in contrast
sought to reduce costs.
In 1960 Emile's son Jean-Louis (1937- ) became editor
of the flagship title, successfully relaunching Les
Echos on the model of the Financial Times.
Disagreements within the family - by that time over 12
members occupied executive and editorial positions - resulted
in management paralysis, culminating in a court ordering
the group to be placed under a provisional directorship
in 1963.
L'Express was spun off from Les Echos and was
acquired by James Goldsmith
in 1977. Jean-Jacques gained attention as an author and
politician. Outside France he is perhaps best known for
Le défi américain [The American
Challenge (New York: Atheneum 1968)], a 1967 expression
of gallic exceptionalism, and 1980 follow-up Le défi
mondial. Emile Schreiber's 1917 L'exemple américain
had urged France to embrace liberalism, mass production
and US management styles.
Jean-Jacques campaigned actively against de Gaulle's return
to power in 1958 and moved to the Parti Radical, which
he led from 1971 to 1979. During the 1970s he was president
of the Lorraine region and MP for Nancy. He gained attention
for what the London Times characterised as a
"Scarlet Pimpernel-like rescue" of composer
Mikis Theodorakis from the Greek junta in 1970. Giscard
d'Estaing appointed him Minister for Reform in Jacque
Chirac's first government in 1974; Servan-Schreiber left
after 12 days because of his opposition to France's nuclear
bomb testing.
Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber together with Jean Boissonnat
founded business magazine L'Expansion in 1967
and Psychologies magazine in 1997.
Beytout
Pierre Beytout (d1976), a director of the Roussel pharmaceutical
group, and wife Jacqueline Beytout (1918-2006) acquired
control of Les Echos in 1963. Jacqueline had taught French
literature in Cairo, married a Danish entrepreneur tagged
the 'peanut king of Senegal.
The Beytouts agreed to acquire the 50% of Les Echos held
by Emile Schreiber's heirs for FFr 3.6 million, subject
to removal of Robert's son Jean-Claude Schreiber from
the chief executive position for 18 months. They next
acquired 16% of Les Echos held by his sister Marie-Geneviève,
before gaining full ownership in 1965 through acquisition
of the shares of Jean-Claude and sister Marie-France.
Jacqueline Beytout took editorial and commercial control
of Les Echos, serving as chair, managing director and
editor-in-chief of the flagship from 1966 to 1989. Her
emphasis on quality and a less parochial outlook boosted
circulation - which more than doubled - and established
the Les Echos as required daily reading among the French
elite. Les Echos expanded into specialist newsletters,
the Enjeux Les Échos investment monthly
and medical publishing. Turnover climbed from FFr11 million
to over 600 million.
Pearson
London-based Pearson group,
owner of the Financial Times and Penguin Books
among other publishing interests, acquired 67% of the
equity in Les Echos during 1988 and moved to 100% in the
following year.
Jacqueline Beytout commented that
the
principal reason for this sale is my determination to
preserve this group. Because if something happens to
me then my successors will pay 57% inheritance tax.
And they would then be forced to sell hastily and in
bad conditions; I prefer to act now so that the enterprise
does not explode.
Pearson
kept Beytout on the board; she resigned in 1990 because
of "increasing disagreements" and devoted herself
to good works.
Her step-grandson, Nicolas Beytout, had become editor
of Les Échos in 1986. He retained that
position until 2004, when he went to the daily Le
Figaro as editor.
LVMH
Groupe Les Echos was acquired in 2007 by Bernard Arnault's
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), which announced
that it would sell its La Tribune (France's second
financial newspaper) to Alain Weill. Journalists on La
Tribune had been strongly critical of alleged interference
by Arnault.
Bernard Arnault (1949- ) controls fashion house Christian
Dior (with a stake of 68% as of 2007) and LVMH (47.5%),
encompassing brands such as Louis Vuitton bags, Ruinart
and Veuve Clicquot champagne, Hennessy brandy, Givenchy,
Christian Lacroix and Dior.
Arnault gained an engineering degree from the École
Polytechnique, initially running Ferret-Savinel, the family
construction and property business. In 1975 Ferret-Savinel
sold its public works and industrial construction operations
to Quillery (later construction group Eiffage) and concentrated
on property development, primarily through its Ferinel
arm. (The family's Groupe Arnault sold Ferinel, including
the George V real estate division and Savinel home building
operation, to CGE in 1995.)
Arnault gained control of the bankrupt Agache-Willot Boussac
textile and retail conglomerate (which included Dior and
the ailing Korvettes retail chain in the US) in 1984,
unloading its non-fashion interests for US$400 million.
He spent over US$1.8 billion to acquire LVMH through a
bitterly contested takeover in the late 1980s that involved
the Guinness (now Diageo) group. During the 1990s LVMH
aborbed other luxury brands such as UK shirtmaker Thomas
Pink, jeweller Chaumet, Fendi leather goods, Donna Karan
and Pucci fashion, TAG Heuer watches and Krug champagne.
Deacquisitions after 2000 included Michael Kors fashion,
Pommery champagne, Hine cognac, Ebel watches and the Tajan
auction house.
Arnault/LVMH publishing interests have included -
- Art
& Auction magazine
- Connaissance
des Arts magazine
-
La Tribune
de l’Expansion newspaper
L'Express-Expansion
Françoise Giroud was the self-made daughter of
a Turkish journalist. Born in Geneva, she left school
at 14 to learn secretarial skills, found work as a continuity
girl on some of France's best-known films, including Renoir's
La Grande Illusion, became an assistant director,
was jailed by the Gestapo at Fresnes prison, became editor-in-chief
of Hélène Lazareff's Elle magazine
and with her married lover Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber
created L'Express in 1953.
Initially a 'journal of conviction', attracting attention
through opposition to colonial war in Indo-China and Algeria,
L'Express came to echo Time and Newsweek.
It faced increasing competition from Le Point
(founded in 1972 with support from Hachette and later
controlled by Gaumont, Alcatel
and Pinault-Printemps-Redoute) and from television.
studies
There has been no major English language study of Les
Échos, the Beytouts or Servan-Schreibers.
For Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber see Jean Bothorel's
Celui qui voulait tout changer, Les années
JJSS (Paris: Robert Laffont 2005) and his Passions
(Paris: Fixot 1991) and Les fossoyeurs (Paris:
Fixot 1993). Insights are offered in L'homme de ma
vie (Paris: Fayard 2004) by former wife Madeleine
Chapsal and Giroud's memoir Leçons Particulières.
There is a broader view in La Saga Servan-Schreiber
(Paris: Seuil 1993) by Alain Rustenholz & Sandrine
Treiner and Le roman de L'Express (Paris: Julian
1979) by Serge Siritsky & Françoise Roth. For
Mendes France see Eric Rousel's Pierre Mendes France
(Paris: Gallimard 2007).
For Arnault see The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault
and the Moët-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story (London:
Bloomsbury 1993) by Nadege Forestier & Nazanine Ravai
and Le Roman Des Grands Patrons: Bernard Arnault,
Vincent Bolloré, Martin Bouygues, Jean-Marie Messier,
Francois Pinault (2001) by Marie-Paul Virard. Guinness
features in The Guinness Affair, Anatomy of a Scandal
(London: Helm 1987) by Hugh Pym & Nick Kochan.
Works on Dior include Christian Dior (New York:
Arcade 2008) by Marie-France Pochna and The Golden
Age of Couture (London: Victoria & Albert Museum
2008) edited by Claire Wilcox
For the 'Agache Affair' see Le dossier Agache-Willot:
Un capitalisme a contre-courant (Paris: Presses de
la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques 1983) by
Benoit Boussemart.
 next
page (Les Echos landmarks)
|
|
