Chantal Gaemperle, LVMH’s Human Resources Director for the past seventeen years, has just been laid off for serious misconduct. The ousting of this protege of the lord has caused an uproar within the group, half of whose Comex is up for renewal, and confirms to the latter that only his family can be trusted.

Chantal Gaemperle, Group HR Director for 17 years, “was escorted from her eighth-floor office to the door of the 22 Montaigne headquarters by Group security guards”. The dismissal comes after an internal investigation lasting several months by the General Administration and Legal Affairs teams, who were particularly interested in the accumulation of benefits in kind received from the Group’s 75 companies (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Moët Hennessy, etc.). Chantal Gaemperle, 62, was also a member of the LVMH Executive Committee.

“A few months after her appointment as head of human resources for the group, she quickly got the “big head”, a friend tells me. The latter had welcomed her as soon as she took up the post, even though neither she nor her husband knew anyone in Paris, having just arrived from Switzerland. When my friend asked her to look at the CV of her daughter, who had graduated top of her class from Esmod Internationale and Aiguille d’Or, she didn’t even bother to reply. No doubt because there was nothing to gain!

The sacking comes after several changes in the governance of the world’s number one luxury goods company, headed by Bernard Arnault. At the end of October, Chris de Lapuente, CEO of the selective retailing division, which includes Sephora, Le Bon Marché, la Samaritaine and the luxury giant’s Duty Free business, also retired from the executive committee.

A new deputy CFO, Cécile Cabanis, has joined the executive committee and will succeed the group’s current CFO, Jean-Jacques Guiony. With the election of Trump, where his young son was present at the new president’s last meeting, the lord is pushing his pieces like a good chess player, to take global luxury by storm, but to do so, he needs loyal people by his side. But what’s the secret to finding people you can trust?