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Hieronimus Boss
: The new CEO Nicolas Hieronimus L'Oreal has already brought in a lot of money in his career
Photo:
JOEL SAGET / AFP
When the world's largest cosmetics company invites you to its virtual general meeting this Tuesday at its headquarters in Clichy, the focus will be on two men:
Jean-Paul Agon
(64) will be vacating his chief position after 15 years at the helm of L'Oréal in a few days
handed over
to his previous deputy
Nicolas Hieronimus
(57). "Hiero", who has spent his entire career in the company, will officially take over the job of CEO on May 1st - as the sixth boss since the company was founded in 1907.
Although L'Oréal is going through the most difficult phase of its history in the Corona crisis, the shareholders - led by the French billionaire family
Bettencourt
- are
relying
entirely on continuity. Agon, who will continue to hold the position of chairman, had successfully led the group to China and most recently promoted digitization. Now Eigengewächs Hieronimus is supposed to continue the strategic course.
The change is entirely in line with the company's philosophy. Like his predecessors Agon and
Lindsay Owen Jones
(75), a former racing driver,
Hieronimus
attended one of the French elite universities, in his case Essec. Like her, he has spent his entire career at L'Oréal; like her, he started out as a salesman; like her, he began his ascent in the prestigious consumer goods division. As a young product manager at the Garnier brand, Hieronimus orchestrated one of the greatest L'Oréal successes of the 1990s with the introduction of the "Fructis" shampoo.
In a company where performance counts and young talent can also advance quickly, that was the starting signal for his career. After stints abroad in Great Britain and Mexico, Hieronimus was promoted to the Group's executive board. Legend has it that he owes his perfect English to listening to pop music. Most recently Hieronimus, who is married and has two children, was responsible for the luxury division, which has grown rapidly in recent years, with brands such as Yves Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani.
With a market value of almost 190 billion euros, L'Oréal is one of the most valuable corporations in Europe, valued far higher than any Dax group. A third of the shares belonged to the Bettencourt family, just under a quarter are owned by the Nestlé Group. In 2020, L'Oreal suffered from the Corona crisis. Sales slumped by a good 6 percent to just under 28 billion euros, and net profit fell by five percent to around 3.6 billion euros. However, business picked up again in the Christmas business and in the first quarter of 2021. Hieronimus recently stated, "When the pandemic is over, there will be a big party celebrating beauty just like it was in the roaring twenties."
Under Hieronimus, the world's largest cosmetics group will primarily rely on two drivers: The already strong Asian business, which already accounts for more than a third of sales - more than Western Europe or North America. In China alone, sales grew by more than 37 percent in 2020. Hieronimus expects that the boom with the economically rising middle class will continue in the coming years.
His second main focus is on the digital sector.
Even today, more than a quarter of business no longer comes from traditional sales channels - supermarkets, drugstores, pharmacies, duty-free shops or perfumeries - but via the Internet.
Brands such as Lancôme and L'Oréal Paris generated sales of more than one billion euros online for the first time in 2020.
Like other major brand providers such as Adidas or Nike, L'Oréal is also massively expanding its digital direct business, also thanks to direct cooperation with influencers.
Hieronimus expects that in the foreseeable future half of sales will run directly on the Group's digital platforms.
lhy