Galeries Lafayette’s flagship on Blvd Haussmann in Paris is famously festive at this time of year.
In February, Ginette Heibronn Moulin will turn 87. In March, she’ll join Forbes’ 2014 World’s Billionaires List as one of its oldest newcomers, with a family fortune estimated at $3 billion.
Through a holding company, Moulin and her family own 100% of a department store empire stretching from Galeries Lafayette’s glass-domed art nouveau flagship on Paris’ Boulevard Haussmann to Beijing, where they set up a swanky Asian home base this past fall.
There are now 250 stores under Groupe Galeries Lafayette’s umbrella, mostly in Europe, including the smaller contemporary retail chain BHV. In 2012, the Groupe’s sales hit 3.7 billion euros, or about $5 billion.
French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur described Moulin and her clan as “cash rich” following the sale of their 50% ownership stake in Monoprix, France’s version of Target, to competitors the Casino Group in 2012 for $1.6 billion. The sale put the family and their fortune on Forbes’ radar and now on our rich list.
Moulin’s family has retained full control of the Groupe since 2009, after years of wranglings with rich rival family the Meyers, early business partners and relatives by marriage. In 2005, they bought out the Meyers with the help of French bank BNP Paribas, taking the Groupe private.
Four years later, Paribas sold its remaining 37% stake to the Moulins, giving them full control of the company. Ginette remains chair, while day-to-day operations fall under the auspices of her 38-year-old grandson, Nicolas Houzé. He took over as head of department stores in March after 15 years learning the ropes under his own father — Ginette’s son-in-law, Phillipe Houzé.
The family’s ascent to France’s retail throne began in 1894, when Ginette’s grandfather Theophile Bader and his cousin Alphonse Kahn, both natives of Alsace, opened a haberdasher, selling ribbons and silks on the corner of Rue Lafayette in Paris. It was near enough to the new Saint-Lazare train station to attract travelers from the provinces as well as the stylish Parisians of the Opera district.
The now-iconic flagship store with its 108-foot neo-Byzantine stained glass dome opened on Boulevard Haussmann in 1912. It was designed to emulate an eastern bazaar, with departments spilling into each other, encouraging browsing (shopping for pleasure was not yet a common pastime).
Bader’s young sons-in-law Max Heilbronn and Raoul Meyer took the helm in the 1920s and 30s, growing the chain across France with stores in Nantes and Montpelier just as mass-market fashion took off in Europe.
In 1941, trouble came for Heilbronn and Meyer. The Nazis occupied Paris, and Galeries Lafayette’s Jewish management team were ousted from their positions. The business was placed under the administration of the German-sympathizing Vichy regime.
In 1942, the year Theophile Bader died, Meyer was in hiding in unoccupied territory and Heilbronn was a prominent member of the French Resistance, having first fought in the French Army. Heilbronn was captured in 1943 and sent to Buchenwald, the notorious Nazi concentration camp.
One of Heilbronn’s fellow prisoners, Etienne Moulin, is said to have helped save his life. Etienne went on to marry his daughter, Ginette, taking leadership of the company upon Raoul Meyer’s death in 1971.
The Meyers and Moulins battled for control of Galeries Lafayette as the chain’s fortunes waxed and waned in the 1980s and 1990s. This included an ill-timed expansion attempt that saw the store open a flashy New York outpost in Trump Tower in 1991 but close, unable to pay the rent, three years later.
Now, the Groupe looks both to e-commerce and emerging markets for growth, with a new outpost in Jakarta and plans to open in Istanbul. They’re also seeking to snap up rival French department store chain Printemps, apparently undeterred by two failed bids.
While the Moulin-Meyer feud is over, Ginette and family remain at odds with another wealthy French dynasty, the art-collecting Wildensteins. The Galeries’ matriarch sat for a rare interview with the New York Times in 2012 to describe how a valuable Monet was stolen from her father’s bank vault in a Gestapo raid of 10 paintings in 1941.
She believes the Wildensteins know more than they’re saying about the location of the Monet and filed a criminal complaint to that effect. The Wildensteins deny any knowledge of the missing painting’s whereabouts.
Ginette told the Times that the painting, an 1889 a study of the Creuse river, “represents some of the history of our family,” adding money was not a motive in recovering the work.
A spokesperson for the Groupe said neither the company nor Moulin had any comment on this story.
via fashion - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGlSeh21Eu7D2uFoD59G5cElnEcbg&url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2013/11/26/high-fashion-nazi-plunder-and-family-feuds-retails-newest-billionaire-has-quite-a-story/
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