Henry Racamier invited Bernard Arnault in as an ally — and lost Louis Vuitton to him

In 1987, Louis Vuitton chairman Henry Racamier merged his company with Moët Hennessy to fend off raiders, forming LVMH. The merger left him sharing power uneasily with Moët's Alain Chevalier, and when unexplained buying pushed up LVMH's stock in 1988, Racamier phoned a young financier he saw as a safe pair of hands: Bernard Arnault, then known mainly for turning around textile group Boussac and its Dior label.

Racamier suggested Arnault buy roughly a quarter of LVMH's shares, which combined with the Vuitton family's own holding would give their side a controlling bloc against Chevalier. Arnault, financed through a vehicle with Guinness, obliged — and kept buying past the agreed figure, reaching over 40% of the group by the end of 1988.

Rather than back Racamier, Arnault sided with Chevalier and turned on his own sponsor. Racamier sued over how the stake had been assembled and won limited, delaying rulings, but by 1990 he had been voted off the board and forced out of the company his father-in-law's family had built.

The reversal became the founding story of modern LVMH, retold ever since in profiles of Arnault as the moment 'the wolf in cashmere' arrived: the ally recruited to keep a house independent instead became the man who took it.