LVMH's Dior Recruits Miu Miu CEO as Managing Director

FILE PHOTO: A logo of fashion house Dior is seen outside a shop in Paris, France, April 15, 2024. REUTERS/Manon Cruz/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A logo of fashion house Dior is seen outside a shop in Paris, France, April 15, 2024. REUTERS/Manon Cruz/File Photo
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LVMH's Dior Recruits Miu Miu CEO as Managing Director

FILE PHOTO: A logo of fashion house Dior is seen outside a shop in Paris, France, April 15, 2024. REUTERS/Manon Cruz/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A logo of fashion house Dior is seen outside a shop in Paris, France, April 15, 2024. REUTERS/Manon Cruz/File Photo

Christian Dior Couture has recruited Benedetta Petruzzo, the CEO of Prada's fast growing Miu Miu label, as its managing director, the LVMH-owned brand said on Tuesday.
The move comes over a year and a half after Delphine Arnault, the eldest child of LVMH boss Bernard Arnault, took the helm at Dior and as it grapples with the fallout of a judicial probe in Italy into working conditions at subcontractors.
Petruzzo will be responsible for product teams at Dior, including supply chain teams, reporting to Delphine Arnault, LVMH said on LinkedIn. Her recruitment, effective Oct. 15, was first reported by trade publication WWD, according to Reuters.
Petruzzo replaces Charles Delapalme, a rising star at LVMH who has also held prominent positions at the group's Fendi and Louis Vuitton labels. "Important new responsibilities" for Delapalme will be announced at a later date, LVMH said.
Petruzzo, a former Bain consultant, worked at Kering's eyewear business for five years before joining Prada as general manager of Miu Miu in February 2020.
Prada has outshone luxury rivals during the recent downturn, including in China, where shoppers are pulling back on high end purchases amid a property crisis. It has seen soaring growth at Miu Miu, whose creative director is Miuccia Prada.
LVMH in July pledged to speed up its supply chain strategy and strengthen audits and controls while increasing control over production at Dior, LVMH's second largest label after Louis Vuitton, following the probe in Italy, made public in June.
That investigation prompted Italy's competition authority to look into whether fashion labels Armani and Dior had misled consumers, while Europe's top asset manager Amundi and other investors asked LVMH to take stronger steps to monitor its suppliers' treatment of workers.
All five of Bernard Arnault's children hold important management positions in the sprawling luxury empire.



Zara Owner Inditex Sees Good Holiday Season after Weak Third Quarter

FILE PHOTO: People shop during the opening of a Zara store after fashion giant Inditex resumed its operations in Venezuela under a franchise agreement, in Caracas, Venezuela April 25, 2024. REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: People shop during the opening of a Zara store after fashion giant Inditex resumed its operations in Venezuela under a franchise agreement, in Caracas, Venezuela April 25, 2024. REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/File Photo
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Zara Owner Inditex Sees Good Holiday Season after Weak Third Quarter

FILE PHOTO: People shop during the opening of a Zara store after fashion giant Inditex resumed its operations in Venezuela under a franchise agreement, in Caracas, Venezuela April 25, 2024. REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: People shop during the opening of a Zara store after fashion giant Inditex resumed its operations in Venezuela under a franchise agreement, in Caracas, Venezuela April 25, 2024. REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/File Photo

Zara owner Inditex said the start of the holiday season had got off to a good start after it reported weaker than expected quarterly results as rainy weather hit some key European markets.
The company behind Zara and other brands said its sales rose a slower than expected 7% to 27.4 billion euros ($28.84 billion) during the period, below the 8% expected by analysts.
Its net profit of 4.44 billion euros for the first nine months of 2024, up 8.5% from a year earlier, was below analysts' average expectation of 4.52 billion euros.
The company however reported a better start of the holiday season, with revenues rising 9% during the six weeks to Dec. 9 as the world's biggest fast-fashion retailer kept drawing in shoppers even as rivals struggled.
Revenue growth in the period, which includes the key Black Friday sales, was slower than the 14% increase reported a year ago, though.
"We had a strong start to the last quarter against a demanding comparable in the same period of 2023," Inditex's capital market director, Marcos Lopez, told Reuters.
He stressed that in constant currency sales growth was 10.5% in the first nine months of the fiscal year and the growth in constant currency during the third quarter was the faster of the year.