More than an elegant breakfast with Audrey Hepburn, it's becoming a fight with lawyers. The US jeweler Tiffany and the French luxury group LVMH, which it was supposed to acquire the former for a record $16 billionI'm now in full legal tussle. Everything has begun last September 9th with the "spite" of the transalpine government, according to the press (Les Echos, which reports the news, is close to the Elysée and is owned by Bernard Arnault's group) orchestrated by President Macron himself: Trump puts duties on French products ? We blow up the deal with Tiffany.
At that point the jeweler made famous by the film with Audrey immediately responded by suing Lvmh in the Delaware court. The hearing will be held in early January 2021 but in the meantime Arnault has counterattacked, in turn addressing the Chancery Court of Delaware: the French luxury giant aims to have the judge recognize the cancellation of the Tiffany purchase transaction for "Material Adverse Effect”, i.e. due to force majeure. Lvmh in practice, despite having admitted in an initial press release to renounce the purchase "under pressure from the French Foreign Ministry", accuses Tiffany of not being able to handle the Covid-19 emergency.
The mismanagement would therefore have changed the cards on the table, effectively making the previous agreement obsolete, according to Arnault's lawyers. According to the accounts published at the end of August, it is true that Tiffany saw its revenues fall by 30% on an annual basis (from over 1 billion to 747 million dollars, despite the recovery of the Chinese market), but it is also true that in the same quarter the company returned to profit, with net income of $32 million. Against the backdrop of the legal battle, the fact remains that the wedding is still theoretically set for next November 24, postponed by 3 months compared to the previous hypothesis at the end of August.
