Weekly Notes: America's Owners. Bettencourt

The owner of a fortune of $99.5 billion has topped the list of the richest women on the planet presented by Forbes magazine three times. The granddaughter of Eugène Schueller, the founder of one of the largest perfume and cosmetics companies L'Oreal, born on July 10, 1953, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers retained the title of the richest woman in the world to this day. Schueller's only daughter, Liliane Bettencourt (1922–2017), retained her position as the richest woman in the world until her death in 2017. Together with an inheritance of $40 billion, represented mainly by a stake in the L'Oréal concern (34.7%), she passed this title to her daughter Françoise, representing the third generation of the family. The world's largest cosmetics manufacturer with 85 thousand employees and an annual turnover of $38 billion also owns very popular brands (Lancôme, Kiehl's, Maybelline and Garnier).

Born in 1881 in Paris, in the family of bakery owners, the French chemist Eugène Paul Louis Schueller experimentally obtained a formula for synthetic hair dye that is distinguished by "durability and deep color." The chemist's first client was his wife, who "ruined her hair with perhydrol." As a "pianist and music teacher", Louise was happy to use the hair-friendly dye produced by her husband in their own apartment. After selling small quantities of dye to hairdressers, in 1907 Schueller registered the brand "Safe Hair Dyes", creating his own company with an authorized capital of 800 francs. Two years later (1909), the aspiring businessman found a companion who wished to remain anonymous, who invested a decent amount and founded the L'Oréal company. The name of the company was a derivative of two French words: gold (l'or) and halo (aureole). With the participation of a former hairdresser of the Russian royal court, Schueller created a school of hair dyeing on the Rue de Louvre in Paris. After the end of the First World War, L'Oréal products became known and in demand outside France, in Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Brazil.

Thanks to a successful venture, Schueller bought an estate on the coast of Brittany in 1920, over time the luxury property increased significantly in value. Soon, the Breton villa was joined by a mansion in the fashionable suburb of Paris Neuilly-sur-Seine, then a private island in the Seychelles. After all, Schueller additionally engaged in the production of celluloid, varnish and plastic, which brought huge profits. In 1929, he received a patent for a series of fast-penetrating dyes (paradiamines), developing an organic product that could infiltrate the hair. The company also used creative advertising, placing a giant billboard promotion O'Cap hair lotion on the wall of a building in Paris in 1931. Moreover, expanding the range of products, including Monsavon soaps, shampoos, bubble baths, sunscreen, varnishes and other cosmetic products, Eugène launched the first monthly magazine on women's health and beauty, Votre Beauté.

The only daughter of Eugène Schueller, born on October 21, 1922, in Paris, was left without a mother at the age of 5, who died in 1927. Liliane was educated at the "school of the Catholic monastic order founded in the 13th century by St. Dominic." From the age of 15, she served as an apprentice and learner, working for L'Oreal, which supplied products to 17 countries around the world, starting with "labeling cosmetics bottles." However, the real hobby of the young girl was considered to be cinema, because according to the official version, "far from political intrigues, Lillian Schueller treated a lung disease after the war in Switzerland and there met her future husband, politician Andre Bettencourt." In 1950, the couple got married and soon the newlyweds settled in their own mansion, built in 1951, three years later they had their only child, daughter Françoise.

Nevertheless, according to the research of the French historian Annie Lacroix-Riese, there is a more plausible version of Liliane's acquaintance with a member of the fascist group Andre Bettencourt. In the 1930s and 1940s, Eugène Schueller financed the pro-fascist organization Comité Secret d'Action Révolutionnaire (CSAR), informally called La Cagoule (the hood). Members of the committee, known in France as cagoulaires, met directly at the Paris office of L'Oreal. "A devout young Catholic, Bettencourt, who wrote anti-Semitic articles for the pro-Nazi newspaper La Terre Française, became particularly close to Schueller and he married his only daughter, Liliane, who had been raised by a widowed father from an early age, in 1950."

Though, the venerable French bourgeois also collaborated with "a German official, commander of the police and security services of the SS intelligence service, Helmut Knochen, known for his active participation in the deportation of French Jews to Nazi death camps and responsible for the execution of several thousand members of the French Resistance and civilian hostages." In Knochen's testimony, captured by the French secret services, he called Schueller his "volunteer collaborator." By the way, in the list of "45 Knochen agents" discovered in 1947, there is indeed an entry "E. Schueller. Businessman". According to Schueller's tax returns for the period between 1940 and 1943, his personal net income, thanks to mutually beneficial cooperation with the Germans, especially in the business of industrial varnishes and paints, increased almost tenfold.

After the Allied landings in Normandy, Bettencourt suddenly changed his political views and, according to the official biography, went over to the side of the Resistance, rather he convinced the post-war French authorities of this fact. At the end of World War II, a member of the French fascist group financed since the 1930s by Schueller, who had collaborated with the Nazis during the war, along with his comrades from La Cagoule, received refuge at L’Oréal and even made a political career. During the presidency of Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, Bettencourt held several ministerial posts (Minister of Telecommunications and Posts and Minister of Industry), under Pompidou he served as Minister of Culture for a couple of years, and in 1973 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs of France and a deputy of the National Assembly of the lower house of the French Parliament. His political path did not prevent him from taking the post of deputy chairman of L'Oreal in the 70s. Of course, marriage to "one of the richest women, traditionally strong in the chemical industry of France", did not require the presence of "certain inclinations of a statesman", because Liliane quite successfully developed the business that she inherited from her father, who died in 1957 and became a "national treasure of France".

At the age of 35, Lillian went from being a co-owner of a company founded by her father in 1909 to becoming the main shareholder of L'Oréal, which has become a well-known European brand with a representative office in the United States. In 1963, L'Oréal underwent an Initial Public Offering (IPO), that allowed the company to attract investors, with Liliane Betancourt retaining a controlling stake. In addition to producing a wide range of cosmetics under the auspices of its own brand, the company began to buy luxury brands, so in 1964 the L'Oreal asset was expanded by the famous perfumery and cosmetics brand Lancôme. In 1967, the company's advertising activities were entrusted to the well-known McCann Erickson agency, which developed the famous slogan: "After all, I deserve it." Thanks to the IPO procedure, the company is actively buying up brands, becoming the world's largest manufacturer of cosmetics and perfumes. L'Oreal commercials feature bearers of popular names, and with the acquisition of the Maybelline brand, in addition to the older age category, young people have become buyers of the company's products.

In 1974, Liliane Bettencourt, having sold half of the shares of L'Oréal to the Swiss company Nestle, through a joint company Gesparal, where she owned 51 percent of the shares, together with the management of Nestle, gained control of 53.85 percent of the capital and 71.66 percent of the votes in L'Oreal. In order to increase control, Bettencourt bought a 5 percent stake in Nestle, becoming the company's largest private shareholder and insisting on maintaining the existing relationship with the company. In 1995, Liliane joined the board of directors of L'Oreal and in 2004 entered into an agreement with the food and baby food manufacturer prohibiting Nestlé from increasing its stake in L'Oreal until her death. In accordance with the signed agreement, the shareholders - the Bettencourt family and Nestle - acted quite in concert.

Unlike Liliane, who is described as "a French businesswoman, philanthropist, famous socialite in the past, and the owner of a fortune of $44.6 billion (as of January 2017), which allows her to be considered one of the richest women in the world," Françoise, who was born on July 10, 1953, is interested in "history, religious studies, and culture." The rich heiress, who graduated from a Catholic school, at the age of 30 became the author of "works on the history of Judeo-Christian relations and Greek mythology." Françoise has been married since 1984 to the son of a L'Oreal employee who previously worked at Nestle, Jean-Pierre Meyers, the grandson of a rabbi who died in Auschwitz. Three years after the wedding, Myers joined the company's board of directors and became vice chairman in 1994, while Françoise joined the board of directors only in 1997.

In 1987, Liliane Bettencourt, together with her husband and daughter, founded the charitable foundation la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller, designed to "support medical, cultural and humanitarian projects." With an annual budget of €160 million, the foundation allocates about "55 percent of the funds to research and education, 33 percent to humanitarian and social projects, and 12 percent to culture and the arts," including the payment of prizes of a quarter of a million euros to "scientists from various fields." For example, the annual award "for leading European biomedical scientists under the age of 45." The foundation is also known for its "active participation in the fight against AIDS and funding the construction of a new wing of the Marmottan-Monet Museum."

In the autumn of 2007, André Bettencourt died, and just a month after her father's death, Françoise Bettencourt Myers filed a lawsuit against François-Marie Banier in December 2007, accusing him of abuse de faiblesse (exploitation of physical or psychological weakness for personal gain) for "abusing Liliane's trust". The French National Police's Financial Crimes Unit investigated "a writer, artist and celebrity photographer who met Liliane during her 1987 photo shoot for Égoïste magazine." Bettencourt went on to give Banier "numerous gifts totaling €1.3 billion, including life insurance policies (€253 million in 2003 and €262 million in 2006), eleven works of art (€20 million in 2001) and paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Delaunay, Léger, and a photograph of the surrealist Man Ray." For twenty years, Liliane supplied her secular friend, who signed a contract with L'Oréal to perform the duties of an "artistic consultant" for 700 thousand euros a year, but after the death of her father, Françoise sued Banier. The case submitted in September 2009 remained deferred first until December 2009 and then until April 2010.

Widowed in 2007, 85-year-old Liliane, despite her age, accomplished to continue to manage the company, shine at social events, relax on a yacht and sunbathe on the beach of her own island in the Seychelles, accompanied by "photographer and socialite François-Marie Banier." However, long before the death of her husband, the elderly admirer literally showered gifts and was even going to adopt a young favorite, with an age difference of a quarter of a century. However, most likely, the couple's love "because of the non-traditional orientation of the alphonse" remained platonic. In response to Françoise's actions, Liliane, who has an iron character, accused her daughter of "interfering in her private life and threatened to disinherit her." The trial, which lasted several years, remained for a long time a favorite topic of world communal publications. Since Liliane categorically refused to undergo a "medical examination of her mental state," the case was postponed until July 2010. Françoise, having tactically paused and reconciled with her mother, actively engaged in further collection of evidence.

In July 2010, the billionaire's butler handed over to the police audio recordings of Liliane’s private conversations. One of the records contained a reminder from asset management adviser Patrice de Maistre with Bettencourt about the "gift to Banier of a private island", in another entry he was mentioned as the "sole heir" of Liliane, with the exception of L'Oréal shares assigned to her daughter and two grandchildren. Based on tape recordings made by the butler and containing Bettencourt's complaints about Banier's becoming too demanding, the police concluded that Liliane was mentally disturbed, "not always aware of her actions." Still, the records, in addition to information about the greedy alphonse, contained information about the financing of French politicians, including former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Finance Minister Eric Werth, the initiator of campaigns against tax evaders.

Thus, Liliane Bettencourt, according to tape recordings that became public, was involved in the corruption schemes of politicians. The tape shows a conversation between Bettencourt and a financial adviser about tax evasion of funds held in undeclared Swiss bank accounts and a conversation with Eric Werth, who asked for a high-paying job for his wife in exchange for a tax rebate of €30 million. Moreover, the records mentioned the fact that Werth received €150 thousand from Bettencourt, which did not appear anywhere officially, for the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy. As treasurer of the Union for a Popular Movement party, he received political donations in cash, whereas by law "large contributions must be paid by check and the identity of the donor must be precisely known." Anonymous contributions for "political parties are €7.5 thousand and €4.6 thousand for individuals."  

Regardless of Sarkozy and Werth's denials, Liliane's former accountant Claire Triboud, in an interview with the digital news magazine Mediapart, acknowledged that French politicians had received envelopes of money at the Bettencourt mansion. In March 2007, during the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, acting as treasurer, Werth received an envelope with 150 thousand euros in cash. Then again, Sarkozy, "who was a frequent visitor to the Bettencourt house, has also repeatedly received envelopes with cash since the period of his mayorship in Neuilly-sur-Seine (1983-2002)." A few days later, Claire complained about the demands of the French police to "retract their testimony against Sarkozy." Nevertheless, in 2013, Sarkozy was charged with illegal receipt of money, but soon the case was closed "due to the inconclusiveness of the evidence." By the by, the fact that Liliane received the tax rebate of 30 million euros promised by Werth has been established reliably. 

In the process of publishing the scandalous records, information arose about the loss of Liliane's financial advisers’ $22 million invested by them in Madoff Investment Securities, which is a pyramid scheme of the notorious chairman of the board of directors of NASDAQ Bernard Madoff, who in 2009 was sentenced to 150 years in prison for fraud. In 2011, it was revealed that Lilliane, who took the advice of one of her lawyers, invested in the gambling business. Françoise again appealed to the court with a demand to deprive her mother of legal capacity, "in order to protect her from the influence of Banier." In turn, Liliane, in an interview with Le Journal de Dimanche, accused her daughter of "selfish interests and envy" and declared her "right to independently manage affairs." After Françoise's statement "about her complete lack of interest in a political scandal," the court deprived Liliane of her legal capacity, indicating the presence of signs of Alzheimer's disease as the official reason for the decision.

The trial drew attention to the political views of the Schueller-Bettencourt family, in particular membership in a secret society associated with many murders and bombings that planned to overthrow the republican government of France in the 1930s, Eugène Schueller, publicly supporting Hitler, and funding a community that held meetings at L'Oréal's headquarters. An additional piquancy of the scandalous situation was given by the direct participation of Françoise's father, journalist and French politician Andre Bettencourt, in the activities of this association. Conversely, soon losing the political component after the closure of the case against Sarkozy, the scandal quickly ended.

Found guilty of "abuse of weakness," Banier was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and paid €158 million in damages to the Bettencourt family. Though, according to the appeal decision, "imprisonment and financial payment were canceled." CEO Patrice de Maistre, who had been discussing the gifts made by Liliane to the photographer, resigned, and Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers took custody of the owner of L'Oréal. In 2010, Françoise's husband, Jean-Pierre Meyers, took over as CEO of the Téthys holding, which manages L'Oreal shares and other assets of the Bettencourt-Meyers family. The post of chairman of the Téthys holding is in the hands of Françoise, "who managed to save the family from financial ruin with her decisive intervention." In February 2012, Liliane Bettencourt gave up her seat on the board of directors of L'Oreal to her grandson, 25-year-old Jean-Victor Meyers. In 2017, 94-year-old Liliane Betancourt died, and her fortune passed to her daughter Françoise Bettencourt-Myers, who managed to increase her capital by one and a half times in five years and became the richest woman in the world and the first woman in the world to own assets exceeding $100 billion.

In 2016, Françoise and her husband, Jean-Pierre Mayers, CEO of French spirits manufacturer Tethys SAS and a member of the boards of directors of Nestlé and L'Oreal, spun off Téthys Invest, a subsidiary designed to invest in various sectors of the economy, from Téthys. The company is headed by investment banker Alexandre Bene, who has been working as a managing partner of Lazard Bank since 2011 and represents the interests of L'Oréal in this capacity. One of the first acquisitions of the fund was a minority stake in the French private hospital group Elsan with a turnover of more than two billion euros, acquired by the Bettencourt-Meyers family in 2017 with the aim of "supporting projects in the fields of health, medical research and life sciences." By the way, shortly before the deal, Elsan bought its competitor MediPole and became a group with a turnover of €2.28 billion. In 2018, Téthys Invest acquired a 20 percent stake in Galileo Global Education, a private education company that unites three dozen educational institutions, including the famous fashion and design school Instituto Marangoni in Milan, Regent's University of London, Paris Business School and other prestigious universities. Galileo Global Education was worth €1 billion at the time of the transaction. 

The financial position of the Bettencourt-Myers family, under the leadership of Françoise, who serves as vice president of the board of directors of L'Oreal, consisting of 16 people, including both of her sons, is strengthening and L'Oréal's share price continues to rise. Currently, Françoise and her sons Jean-Victor and Nicolas jointly own a third of L'Oreal's shares. The eldest son, Jean-Victor Meyers, along with his parents, manages the company founded by his great-grandfather, while his younger brother Nicolas is the managing director of the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation. Françoise is listed as the president of the charitable foundation "aimed at supporting medical, cultural and humanitarian projects", and her husband holds the post of vice president. In April 2019, the foundation promised to donate €100 million for the restoration of Notre Dame after the fire and the same amount promised to allocate directly to the L'Oréal concern. However, in fact, there were no donations, as well as from other billionaires who made similar promises, including François Pinault and Bernard Arnault.

Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, in addition to managing the company, is engaged in writing books and playing the piano, periodically awarding prizes under the L'Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science program, according to which "outstanding scientific women from all over the world receive large sums of money for their natural science research, and their young colleagues receive scholarships that allow them to engage in science without being distracted by other earnings." Since 2005, the philanthropist has been supporting a project to help deaf and hard of hearing people, "cooperating with a company that installs cochlear implants for patients with hearing loss." She even wrote a joint book with Professor of Medicine Bruno Fraiche called "Hearing for Dummies".

Now global beauty corporation L'Oréal, which owns 36 international brands, including Kiehl's, Lancôme, Giorgio Armani Beauty, Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, Ralph Lauren, Clarisonic, Maybelline New York, Essie and others, has acquired a minority stake in Debut, an American biotechnology company specializing in synthetic biology. The amount of the deal carried out through the venture fund Business Opportunities for L'Oréal Development (Bold) was not disclosed. Bold's functions are limited to the purchase of minority stakes in innovative startups, so L'Oréal, through this fund, began investing in DSG Consumer Partners IV in the spring, which is a "venture capital company financing startups in Southeast Asia and India."

In 1990, a joint Soviet French venture was established, "engaged in the production of Elsève shampoos, Recital hair dyes and Maroussia perfumes." Then, in 1993, the Russian branch of L'Oréal was opened, called CJSC Rusbel, renamed in 2003 to CJSC L'Oréal, and in 2010 the first L'Oréal plant in Russia appeared in Kaluga. Soon, L'Oreal invested more than 100 thousand euros in the expansion of the Russian group of factories in the Kaluga region. In March 2022, the company announced its withdrawal from Russia, but the CEO of the corporation, Nicolas Hieronymus, confirmed in November 2023 that it was "partially preserving business in the Russian Federation", in particular the production of cosmetic and hygiene products at the plant in Kaluga. Nevertheless, L'Oreal has many trademarks registered in Russia, including L'Oréal Professionnel, L'Oréal: creating beauty that moves the world, L'Oréal Paris and others.

Under the popular call of "tackling climate change, which disproportionately affects the most vulnerable groups and exacerbates existing inequalities", L'Oréal Paris has invested €10 million in 6 projects "contributing to the reduction of carbon emissions and linked to the empowerment of women's communities". The Brazilian project to protect the forests of Jacunda aims to "protect the Amazon jungle with the possibility of involving local communities." The Chinese project envisages "joint reforestation with local communities, transforming the wasteland in the Liugui region into vibrant forests." The project to create "next-generation farms focused on healthy soils, rich biodiversity and increased benefits for farmers" concerns the territory of Belgium and France. Launched in Zimbabwe in 2011, an ambitious project to protect forests in the Caribbean from extinction aims to "prevent the release of more than 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing soil degradation". The innovative project, titled "Small Forest – Big Potential and supporting small forest owners who do not have the necessary information and tools to sustainably manage their properties," is aimed at "improving the livelihoods of forest owners and their families by removing carbon from the air." The sixth project to protect the "unique mangrove forests and empower the local population Blue Carbon in Mosquitia" is being carried out in Honduras.

The climate issue, which has opened up an unlimited source of enrichment for a certain circle of people, has been regularly discussed at annual UN summits since 1995. The most important, when the Paris Agreement was adopted, was the climate summit held in Paris from November 30 to December 12, 2015. Traditionally, the delegations represented by each of the almost 200 countries reach several hundred people (for example, at the 2015 summit, Canada was represented by 382 delegates, the Russian Federation sent 315 representatives, almost all 54 African countries also represented delegations of such an impressive size), and are complemented by businessmen, industrialists and farmers. By the way, on the eve of the summit, on June 4-5, 2015, the MedCop21 conference "dedicated to the climate problems of the Mediterranean" was held in Marseille.

Currently, from October 21 to November 1, 2024, the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) on Biodiversity is being held in Colombia (Cali), considered "the first international biodiversity summit since the signing of the Kunming-Montreal Agreement in 2022, including 23 goals aimed at halting the extinction of fauna and flora by 2030." None of the goals of the international Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted in Rio de Janeiro on June 5, 1992, have been achieved, due to "insufficient funding, which increased by 112 percent in 2022." Nonetheless, "African countries are demanding the creation of a new biodiversity-only fund, in addition to existing funds, including the Environment Fund (FEM)." The next UN Climate Conference is scheduled to be held in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku (November 11-22, 2024). Hence, the news of the World Bank's "loss" of $41 billion belonging to the "climate change fund" is not a surprise. And the refusal of Environment and Climate Change Canada to provide financial documents requested by the police for more than eight years becomes quite understandable.

Another fact of embezzlement of budget funds (more than $67.2 million) was Trudeau's program to "buy" weapons from the population, and "not a single unit of firearms was bought back." Rick Igercich, president of the National Firearms Association of Canada, has called on Canada's Auditor General, Karen Hogan, to investigate "inefficient spending." In keeping with his role as a former drama teacher, Canada's corrupt prime minister, who provoked the crisis in the country, "really cried during a meeting of the Liberal faction and complained about having trouble sleeping in an effort to keep his post."

The 16th BRICS summit (an informal interstate association established in 2006) and a peaceful rally organized by journalist Tommy Robinson and held on October 26 near the parliament building in London were important world news in Kazan (Russia) on October 22-24, 2024. Tommy Robinson, who was arrested the day before, was unable to take part in an absolutely peaceful and patriotic event, he was sentenced to 9 months in prison along with bandits and murderers. Despite the police, who were very loyal to the rallies of Hamas supporters, policemen blocked all approaches to the parliament with anti-personnel barriers, tens of thousands of citizens, tired of the unreasonable and criminal actions of the authorities, gathered for the rally.