Kroll

"Similarly, Kroll was commissioned by LVMH to obtain information on other competitors, such as Hermès, Versace, Ferragamo, or Armani. Regarding Domenico De Sole, the investigations that Kroll is conducting at the request of LVMH go far beyond9."

"To establish this seventeen-page report, Kroll claims to have conducted research in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Panama, and the Caribbean, including the Cayman Islands and the Dutch Antilles. The company specifies that "the information [...] was collected from commercial, legal, and press databases, from appropriate public archives, as well as through confidential interviews with different local sources and physical verifications on the relevant sites.""

"Like other luxury companies, LVMH has worked several times with Kroll, officially to track down counterfeits or parallel sales worldwide, and evaluate all means to put an end to them; or to monitor distribution networks, local agents and verify that they do not carry out operations for their own account."

"While François Pinault's offices on Boulevard de La Tour-Maubourg (in the former LVMH headquarters) have become a hive of activity, while Kroll is supposed to be monitoring Ford and De Sole like a shadow and reporting everything that is happening at Gucci, Bernard Arnault, for once, knows nothing, is not informed about anything, and has no suspicions. On March 18, he participates in a meeting with financial analysts, during which he reaffirms that he has no intention of launching a takeover bid for the entire capital of Gucci and is completely optimistic about the outcome of his operation."

"The head of Kroll in France then specifies the areas of research he proposes to undertake. This includes "clarifying the management structure of the company and identifying its key personnel; collecting any information related to the compensation of the main decision-makers and, in particular, the conditions for granting stock options; evaluating the quality of professional relationships between the main leader of the company and its executives, as well as its shareholders and directors; establishing a detailed personal and professional profile (background, assets, sources of income, external activities, network of relationships, reputation, etc.) of Domenico De Sole and Tom Ford and, if applicable, noting any information concerning their professional integrity; obtaining any financial or commercial documents available on the company and its leaders in the appropriate jurisdictions; gathering any information useful for a thorough understanding of the company's activities (operations, licenses, etc.) in the main geographic areas where it generates the majority of its revenue and identifying any past or present problems related to its activities; attempting to identify the strategy envisaged by your opponents in the context of ongoing negotiations." The initial budget is 500,000 francs (76,224 euros) excluding taxes."

"For example, Actavis made a hostile bid for Pliva, a large international pharmaceuticals company based in Croatia, in 2006. The chief executive didn’t want our takeover and got a US drugs group, Barr Pharmaceuticals, to counter-bid for it as a ‘white knight’. Soon it became clear that the public relations strategy was to focus on my time in Russia, with Barr hiring Kroll, an investigations agency, to help it in a PR battle."