Heir Robert LouisDreyfus was despite him

After a long journey punctuated by multiple adventures, this false dilettante had to close the loop by purchasing, in July 2007, the majority of the capital of the trading Louis Dreyfus group, founded fifty-six hundred years earlier by his great-grandfather Leopold. A return to the fold in the form of revenge for the business leader who had suffered in his youth, ugly little duck of the family.

Heir, Robert Louis-Dreyfus was despite him. Raised by an English nurse, and involved in the gilded youth of Hattemer course "DRC" had a whole path destiny: to enter the family group, including his father, Jean-Louis-Dreyfus, took the reins with Pierre, his first cousin. Las! The single male Jean offspring proved be a dunce at school. At the same time as a gifted Poker, raises a tidy sum of money and the will grow about 15 years later. Patron of the American company of pharmaceutical studies IMS, it takes 5 of the capital. Under his leadership, IMS multiplies the acquisitions; its market capitalization explodes. When he resells the Dun & Bradstreet company, in 1988, he gets 100 million.

This sense acute dese Affairs, DRC has developed it with Sigmund g. Warburg, the great banker who made the first foreign OPA in the history of the City. Its good second star will be David Dubow, the founder of IMS, who invited him to sit on its Board of Directors in 1977. He had met him at Harvard, where, breaking with its image of dunce, he had won a place. It will also be a point of honour to pay itself these expensive studies. In a same momentum of independence, the persons avoiding military service heir in Louis Dreyfus joined 27 years with the hope to put upon the concepts acquired at Harvard, claquera the door to thirty-five, or be given responsibilities that he hoped. "Go, it was a way to see if I was worth something," confided - it to the authors of "Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1)., the adventures of a Don Juan of affairs It will then build on Saatchi & Saatchi. British advertising agency, who had given the "the" in the profession in the 1970s and 1980s, is dying. Charles Saatchi, co-founder of the Agency with his brother Maurice and companion of Robert casual game, asked him to return to the situation in 1989. Ares seeing accounts, DRC be divided by four his own remuneration, negotiated a few days earlier. reduce a third that of the two brothers and sell all paintings of master on Charlotte Street building. Shock therapy is quickly the effect and, in the summer 1992, while the rally point on the horizon, DRC announces that he will back by a place for its financial year, Charles Scott, a former of IMS. Not without relief: the past head of Saatchi & Saatchi have been gruelling. It is at this time that Robert has stopped the poker time. This time again, he says, that started the leukemia that declare later.

Icon of the "pub" and fall prey to the British gazettes, the man fated polos and large cigars carries out following other media rescue, that of Adidas. As Saatchi & Saatchi, the German sports equipment manufacturer, then property of Bernard Tapie, is more than evil. Called to his bedside by the Bank of Phoenix (AGF) and SDBO (Crédit Lyonnais), DRC results in the adventure of his former comrades in IMS, including the French Christian Tourres, who became his assistant. The two men took their headquarters at Herzogenaurach, headquarters of Adidas. Stars of the show-biz and sport are called to the rescue to re-brand the brand, scope by the victory of the Blues in 1998.

The happy years

For DRC, who preferred much company Louis Acariès Boxer or football player Franz Beckenbauer to the leaders of business and the private jet was always ready to take off from le Bourget to take him away see a match, the Adidas years were happy years. It cannot be said of another episode life sport businessman Lighthouse: the redemption of the Olympique de Marseille in 1996 (see below).

Ironically, by OM, his only real failure, that Robert Louis-Dreyfus made the general public. In the shadows, however, this father of three boys, remarried in 1992 to a former Russian star dancer, continued to what it has always been: money. After the market research, advertising and sports shoes, telecoms were his fourth playground. It all started in 2000 by an interview with Jacques Veyrat, young X-bridge at the head of LDCom, small subsidiary of Louis Dreyfus in the laying of fibre optic cables. Between Polytechnique brilliant and very intuitive business man, the current is passed immediately. Respectively Director-General and non-Executive Chairman of LDCom, the two men will be a major player in the telecoms industry, kicked of acquisitions of dot made evil by the bursting of the dot-com bubble, of restructuring and social plans. Fishing here and there, among many small fish, a large, as nine Telecom or Cegetel. "Deals" that, of the admission of Jacques Veyrat, could not be done without the valuable address book of DRC. In 2004, he gives the Presidency of Neuf Cegetel (ex-LDCom) to his effective right arm to take in hand the destiny of the mother house. Led for almost thirty years by her cousin Gérard, i.e. by the American branch of the family, this jewel of French capitalism had ceded ground to the Cargill and other WMD. As Saatchi & Saatchi, the first decision is highly symbolic: he renounces to his remuneration and the thick carpet of the 8th floor of the headquarters of the avenue of the large-army, where the barons of the empire DRC were installed, prefer the more tonic atmosphere of the 4th, one of the trading. After the reorganization of the group around an umbrella company managing his interests, he will propose in February 2007 to the other heirs of redeem them their shares and sell Neuf Cegetel to SFR in December of the same year. On his estate, DRC had planned it from the start, by Jacques Veyrat his dauphin. "Am rather Don Quixote than Sancho Panza", he had a day launched his father. An injunction which was perhaps his only real legacy.