LVMH has agreed to buy Tiffany & Co for more than $16 billion in the largest luxury-goods deal ever, raising the French conglomerate’s profile in jewellery and giving it access to a broader swath of shoppers in the US and Asia.
The owner of the Louis Vuitton brand agreed to pay $135 a share for the US jeweller, according to a statement on Monday.
LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault is challenging Cartier owner Richemont for dominance in the global jewellery business. While LVMH’s stable of 75 brands includes Christian Dior fashion and Dom Perignon champagne, the company hasn’t been as prominent in jewellery as in fashion or cosmetics. Acquiring Tiffany would more than double LVMH’s jewellery scale and boost its market share to more than 18 per cent, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Deborah Aitken.
Tiffany makes sense for LVMH because of the scarcity of acquisition targets with global scale and brand appeal in jewellery, the least-crowded category in the luxury sector, wrote Rogerio Fujimori, an analyst at RBC Europe.
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