LVMH names Matthieu Soudan managing director of jeweler Repossi
Anne de Vergeron, who led the jeweler since 2020, returns to a business development post at LVMH she held for almost twelve years.
LVMH has appointed Matthieu Soudan as managing director of Repossi, the high jewelry house it fully owns, putting a Bulgari and Tag Heuer veteran in charge of the maison's next phase. He succeeds Anne de Vergeron, who has run Repossi as chief executive since 2020.
Soudan will be based in Paris and report to Stéphane Bianchi, LVMH's group managing director and the chairman and chief executive of its watches and jewelry division. He was most recently head of strategic projects at Bulgari in Rome, an Italian house we know for its jewelry, watches, accessories and fragrances.
De Vergeron returns to her earlier post as LVMH's group director of business development, a role she had held for almost twelve years before taking the Repossi brief. She oversaw LVMH's initial minority stake in Repossi, bought in 2015, which grew into full ownership by 2022.
Bianchi said in a statement shared with WWD that he was delighted to entrust Repossi's leadership to Soudan as the house opens a new chapter, praising his strong strategic vision and his ability to execute strategies that support operational excellence.
Bianchi also thanked de Vergeron for her commitment and contribution to Repossi's development, saying that under her leadership the brand had built strong foundations. Those foundations, per LVMH, include reinforced work on the house's Berbère, Antifer and Serti sur Vide signatures.
What de Vergeron built at Repossi
De Vergeron also redeployed Repossi's retail network in France and abroad, opening its first freestanding store on Omotesando in Tokyo and expanding the maison's presence in the Middle East, South Korea and the United States during her six years running the house.
Soudan is a French national and a graduate of the Mines ParisTech engineering school. He began his career at the Paris-based data analytics firm Ekimetrics before moving into the LVMH group, where his most recent stretch ran eight years at Tag Heuer.
He joined Tag Heuer in 2017 as head of software product and design, a role in which he helped build the watchmaker's connected watch business. In 2022 he was appointed general manager for France, Monaco and Benelux, before his move to Bulgari.
LVMH said Soudan's background across its watches and jewelry division, pairing strategic thinking with a record of operational execution, would help support the maison's desirability, its client experience and its long-term performance in his new role.
Why LVMH is doing this now
Soudan is tasked with driving Repossi's next phase of development in contemporary high jewelry and strengthening the maison's international visibility, according to LVMH. The move lands as the group's watches and jewelry unit reported organic sales up 11% in the second quarter.
That growth confirms strength in hard luxury across the sector as global luxury demand stabilises after a prolonged slowdown, a pattern we have tracked through LVMH's other leadership moves this year, from its beauty division to Balenciaga's ranks.
LVMH was born in 1987 from the merger of Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy, and it now stands as the world's leading luxury goods conglomerate, uniting dozens of maisons under one Paris-based holding structure with Bernard Arnault at its head.
In our profile of how Bernard Arnault built luxury's largest empire, we found the group pairs creative autonomy at each maison with rigid financial control from Paris, producing fashion-division operating margins above 25% and €84.7 billion in 2024 revenue across 75 houses.
We have also charted how LVMH rotates executives across divisions rather than promoting purely by seniority, most recently pulling a Balenciaga operations executive into its beauty command structure and drawing Alexandre Arnault onto Nike's board.
Our reporting on next-generation luxury leadership found LVMH runs succession as a tournament, rotating family members through distinct divisions while keeping non-family executives such as Bianchi in place, the same structure Soudan now moves through.
No date has been given for when Soudan takes up the role, and LVMH has not said whether Repossi's retail expansion under de Vergeron, into the Middle East, South Korea and the United States, will continue at the same pace under its new leadership.
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Images: Matthieu Soudan Courtesy of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton