Arnaud Lagardère forced to resign executive roles after preliminary charges filed

Arnaud Lagardère has been forced to resign as chair and chief executive of media group Lagardère after French financial prosecutors filed preliminary charges against him.

The charges relate to dissemination of false or misleading information, vote buying, misuse of corporate assets and abuse of power, and failure to file accounts.

However, they concern companies owned by Lagardère personally and not the group itself, the company said on Tuesday. The events being probed took place in 2018 and 2019.

Lagardère disputes the charges and will appeal against them. In the French system, the charges are a first step and judges will decide later whether the matter will go to trial. 

As part of the financial prosecutors’ decision, Lagardère has been banned from holding executive office so has been obliged to resign his posts. He will also appeal this decision.

Lagardère — which owns a publishing house, several magazines and news outlets and a travel retail business — was taken over by French corporate raider Vincent Bolloré’s media group Vivendi last year. It was the final act in a drawn-out corporate battle that ended with Lagardère losing control of the company built by his father that bears his family name.

Lagardère’s directors will meet in the near future to take “all provisional measures required to ensure the group’s governance pending Arnaud Lagardère being able to resume the management of the group”, it said in a statement.

Shares in Lagardère rose 2 per cent on Tuesday morning to €20.60, giving it a market value of €2.9bn.

The charges against Lagardère, which are a step short of official indictment, were made following an investigation opened in 2021 into the alleged use of funds from his companies to finance his lifestyle and personal expenses, a judicial source told the Financial Times.

“He was placed under judicial supervision with a ban on management and the obligation to provide a bond of €200,000,” they added.

The investigation was opened following a complaint lodged by Amber Capital, an activist investor who engaged in a long campaign against Lagardère’s management of the family group prior to its takeover by Vivendi, as well as alerts from the French markets regulator and the national audit office.