Published
Dec 4, 2015
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Dispute between Lanvin and Alber Elbaz hits the courts

Published
Dec 4, 2015

The divorce on 28th October between Lanvin and its Creative Director Alber Elbaz is increasingly heading towards a violent, public settling of accounts which the Parisian label could have doubtlessly done without...

Lanvin, Spring/Summer 2016 - © PixelFormula


Shocked by the designer's brutal departure and the disquiet it generated, staff representatives triggered an alert procedure, requiring the top management to answer several questions, from the rushed removal of Alber Elbaz to the €30 million downturn in sales recorded between 2012 and 2014. Lanvin's revenue in fact fell from €235 million to €206 million in the course of three years.
 
The management replied by summoning the employee representative committee to a summary proceeding hearing at Paris' District Court, claiming the alert procedure exercised by the committee to be unlawful. Once the hearings began, revelations started coming thick and fast.

The hearings brought to light not just the tensions existing within the company, but also its financial problems.  After posting losses over the course of nearly thirty years, the company created in 1889 by Jeanne Lanvin had returned to profitability in 2007. But in the last few years the trend was reversed again, as Alber Elbaz denounced after being dismissed, pointing the finger at the top management's lack of any marketing or investment strategy. 
 
The figures published during the hearings actually confirmed the downfall in the label's profitability, which slumped from €11.9 million in 2012 to €2.9 million in 2014, while its EBITDA, as high as €14 million in 2012, fell to €3.3 million in 2014, according to the figures from the commercial court's registry.
 
Last, but no less controversial, is the matter of Alber Elbaz's severance compensation, which, according to the rumours, apparently amounts to something between €20 and €40 million...
 

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