Loreal

Armani’s 15% stake is the largest contested block of independent Italian luxury since LVMH bought Fendi in 2003, and three luxury suitors are now in the room: LVMH, L’Oréal and EssilorLuxottica. Business of Fashion reported on 10 May 2026 that Giorgio Armani Group CEO Giuseppe Marsocci is preparing to appoint two financial advisers to run the sale of an initial 15% stake to a preferred luxury group within 18 months, the window written into Giorgio Armani’s own succession plan before his death on 4 September 2025. The buyer of that first 15% has an option to take its position up to 54.9% over three to five years. The Giorgio Armani Foundation, the founder’s instrument of control, retains at least 30% indefinitely. Those are the numbers that shape every move the three named suitors are about to make. ...

On 16 April 2026, in Florence, Luca de Meo stood in front of investors for more than three hours and named the plan that will define the next four years at Kering: ReconKering. The Kering Florence strategy 2026 is a three-phase reset — structural fix by end-2026, rebuild to growth by end-2028, reclaim “Next Luxury” leadership by end-2030 — and it lands on four very different desks at once: Gucci under Demna Gvasalia, Bottega Veneta under Matthieu Blazy’s successor moment, Balenciaga in the post-Demna handover, and a beauty business that is no longer Kering’s at all after L’Oréal closed its $4.6 billion acquisition of Kering Beauté on 21 April 2026. This piece reads each of those four landings against the targets de Meo actually committed to in Florence, and against the Q1 2026 numbers that frame them. ...