LVMH chief told Trump a deal was in the works before Tiffany's takeover
- LVMH chief Bernard Arnault told Donald Trump a deal was in the works before he agreed the $16.2 billion takeover of Tiffany & Co, according to the Financial Times.
- "I told the president I would buy something significant in the US, but I didn't tell him the name," the French luxury titan's chairman and CEO told the newspaper.
- Arnault spoke to Trump at the opening of a Louis Vuitton leather factory in Texas last month, two days after a top LVMH executive proposed a deal to Tiffany's chief executive.
- The billionaire Frenchman may have given Trump a heads up in a bid to stay in his good books, given the president's past hostility towards foreign takeovers of American companies and pressuring of competition regulators to approve or nix deals.
LVMH chief Bernard Arnault told Donald Trump a deal was in the works before he agreed the $16.2 billion takeover of Tiffany & Co, according to the Financial Times.
"I told the president I would buy something significant in the US, but I didn't tell him the name," the French luxury titan's chairman and CEO told the newspaper. Arnault spoke to Trump at the opening of a Louis Vuitton leather factory in Texas last month, two days after he dispatched a top executive to propose a deal to Tiffany's chief executive.
Arnault, the world's third-richest person with a net worth north of $100 billion, also called Trump last Sunday to discuss the two companies' agreed $16.2 billion deal, the Financial Times reported.
He may have given Trump a heads up in a bid to stay in his good books, given the president's past hostility towards foreign takeovers of American companies and pressuring of competition regulators to nix or approve deals.
For example, Trump blocked a Chinese-backed group from buying US-based Lattice Semiconductor in September 2017, and barred Broadcom - which was bought by a Singaporean company in 2016 - from acquiring US-based Qualcomm in March 2018.
Similarly, after United Technologies and Raytheon agreed to merge this summer, Trump voiced concerns that the deal would lessen competition for government contracts. In July 2018, he tweeted that it was "so sad and unfair" that the Federal Communications Commission didn't approve the merger between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media.
Moreover, his administration passed a law in the fall of 2018 that expanded the range of deals that could be reviewed due to national security concerns.