LVMH to buy top business magazine Challenges

French luxury group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE has reached agreement to purchase top business magazine Challenges, the latter's main shareholder Claude Perdriel told AFP on Tuesday, with the deal expected for early next year.

LVMH, owned by billionaire Bernard Arnault, had been eying the latest of several media conquests for some time and the deal will notably add titles including Sciences et Avenir (Science and Future) to a growing stable.

For Perdriel, "the important thing, is that the journal be in good hands and continues with a shareholder determined to defend it."

LVMH did not confirm to AFP the accord. The group already owns the Les Echos-Le Parisien group, which includes those two newspapers and Radio Classique.

It also acquired earlier this year the liberal daily L'Opinion and financial news site L'Agefi, in which it already had a stake.

Challenges, founded in 1982 and which Perdriel bought five years later, describes itself as "a non-partisan and independent economic and political magazine."

According to France's Alliance for Press and Media Figures, the magazine sold more than 140,000 copies on average per issue across 2024, compared to 183,000 in 2020.

On Monday, Challenges journalists warned the future buyer, without naming LVMH, that they must preserve "their editorial independence" and also maintain publication of the annual ranking of the wealthiest people in the county.

Arnault and his family rank second in the 2025 edition of the list of well-to-do.

Having topped the list since 2017, the family were knocked off the top this year by the heirs of Hermes.

Perdriel, who turns 99 next month, told AFP that "it is with a little sadness that I leave behind the press after 60 years in this universe."