Groups of companies: LVMH complex holding structure

This dissertation proposes itself as an effort to give a normative shape to the complex but very frequent reality of corporate groups. For this purposes I will present a comparative analysis of some European Union Member States’ law such as Germany, Italy and French law. These legal systems still offer differentiated normative solutions to the issues triggered by Groups, i.e. to balance the interests of the parent company and the single controlled entities, just to mention one of them. Meanwhile I will investigate the point that European Union Company law has reached on the matter so far, for the exact purpose of expressing the need for a legislative reform. In order to give a non-European point of view we will shift our focus to the United Kingdom and the United States of America: in particular we will sum up the law of groups contained in the UK Companies Act and in the Delaware General Corporation Law. Finally a more practical insight cannot lack to explain not only the reasons why groups are so popular but also to outline the complexities that lays behind an holding company. For this reason, we will analyze the structure of the French “groupe d’entreprises” LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton which have as a majority shareholder the Arnault group, through the holding Christian Dior and it is actually under the direction of B. Arnault. Recently the acquisition of the Corporation Tiffany & Co. by LVMH has been under the attention also with regard to the political intervention of the Macron Government and the Trump administration. For this reason and also for the COVID-19 outbreak the deal was broken leading to a complaint before the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware filed on September 09 2020. The case and its recent implications will also be analyzed throughout this thesis.