The Bettencourt family – is there a single family office?

How did the Bettencourt family earn their fortune?

Their fortune comes from one main source, a 33% stake in the world’s largest beauty company, L’Oreal. The comapany was founded by the grandfather of the current head of the family, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, one of the richest women in the world. In 2024 she had an estimated fortune of nearly $100 billion according to Forbes. L’Oreal was founded by Eugene Schueller, a Frenchman of German descent, in Paris in 1909 when he developed a hair dye formula he called Oreale. In 1919, he founded the company that would eventually become L’Oreal as the Society of Safe Hair Dyeing. From its beginnings in hair colouring, L’Oreal’s product range has expanded and the company now employs more than 90,000 people. 2024, L’Oreal had a turnover of more tha 41 billion euros, and had a Net cash flow: 6.1 billion euros

How did  L’Oreal develop?

It has been a long journey, marked by many mergers and acquisitions, from a hair-dyeing company employing three people in 1920 to 86,000 employees in 2019. In 1964, L’Oreal acquired the Lancôme perfume brand, which is still sold today, and in 1965 Garnier, the second most successful beauty brand in the L’Oreal portfolio. In 1970, Biotherm, a company focused on facial refreshment, was added to the portfolio. In 1973, L’Oréal made its first foray into the pharmaceutical market with the acquisition of Synthelabo, which later merged to form Sanofi, a pharmaceutical company still in operation today. In 1996, L’Oreal acquired Maybelline, a US mass make-up company, making it the undisputed leader in the US beauty industry. Highly successful products include Garnier Fructis and Giorgio Armani perfumes, particularly Acqua di Gio. Until today the companies Nestlé and L’Oreal are closely tied.

Does the Bettencourt family have a Single Family Office?

Yes, they do, it is called Tethys Invest. According to a French newspaper, it invests in various sectors, mainly in the healthcare industry. It is managed by the former CEO of Lazarus Bank, a close friend of the Bettencourt family. Structured as a private equity fund with capital of more than three billion euros, Tethys invest will be the entity in the Bettencourt universe to receive the annual dividends from L’Oreal, guaranteeing a steady and strong inflow of capital in the future. For 2015, the dividends on the L’Oreal Bettencourt share will be as follows to 500 million euros and stays in that volume in the consecutive years. The creation of Tethys Invests contrasts sharply with the management of Francoise Bettencourt Meyer’s mother, Liliane Bettencourt, who at the end of her life was under the guardianship of her grandson because she had given away almost a billion of her assets to a famous French photographer who was later sued for taking advantage of her. The daughter’s investment strategy is very different from that of her mother in previous decades.

How does the Bettencourt family invest?

One of Tethys invest’s first acquisitions was Elsan, which operates the second largest private hospital in France. It strengthens and demonstrates the single family office’s focus on healthcare. Another investment, also in the healthcare sector, is the acquisition of Sebia, a provider of medical equipment and technology for in-vitro diagnostic tests, in which Tethys invest has acquired a majority stake and added to its portfolio. A third company in which Tethys is invested is Provepharm Life Solutions, a company that develops and markets pharmaceuticals. Although Tethys Invest was set up with the aim of investing in various sectors of the economy, the single-family office’s focus to date has clearly been on the healthcare sector. Given the expertise in the health-related area of skin care, these investments make a lot of sense and could create synergies for the Bettencourt family. A non-healthcare investment of Téthys Invest is a 20% stake in Galileo Global Education, a provider of multidisciplinary and global education that aims to reinvent the way private education is delivered.

This article is part of our detailed report “The single family offices of Europe’s richest families“.

Picture source: Jasmin Quaynor