Kering Adds Two to Executive Committee
PARIS — Kering has added two female members to its executive committee, the French group said Tuesday.
Effective immediately, the move brings the committee up to 13 members and 46 percent women, the company said in a statement revealing the nomination of Mélanie Flouquet and Armelle Poulou to the body.
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Milan-based Flouquet, Kering’s chief strategy officer, joined the French group in May 2021 following a 20-year career at JP Morgan, where she was most recently managing director leading the luxury goods equity research team.
A dual graduate of EM Lyon and Lancaster University, she is also a chartered accountant in the U.K. and cut her teeth at KPMG.
Currently the group’s chief financial officer, Poulou took up the position in September 2023 after her predecessor Jean-Marc Duplaix become deputy chief executive officer in charge of operations and finance in a management restructuring.
A 1993 graduate of elite French business school HEC, she joined Kering in 2019 and served as its director of corporate finance, treasury and insurance after spending more than two decades at France’s state-owned multinational electric utility company EDF.
Kering is due to release its first-quarter revenue on April 23. It issued a dramatic profit warning on March 19 that revealed it is expecting a 10 percent decline in its consolidated revenue over the period, owing to a tougher-than-expected turnaround for its star brand Gucci.
Having flagged in February another year of financial pain as it pursues its brand elevation strategy against a background of slowing luxury spending, the French group continues to lag competitors as it implements the Gucci turnaround and seeks to rev up the ailing Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen labels.
At the annual general meeting on April 25, Kering will also propose three new independent directors — Rachel Duan, Giovanna Melandri and Dominique D’Hinnin — to join its board. Their appointment follows the departure of French Ivorian banking executive Tidjane Thiam, who is pursuing political ambitions; Jean-François Palus, who stepped into the role of chairman and CEO of Gucci, and the actress Emma Watson, whose three-year term as chair of Kering’s sustainability committee is set to expire.
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