Pierre Godé

"Pierre Godé perfectly measures the decisive role he played in making Bernard Arnault the richest man in France; he was paid accordingly, his own fortune is made, but he knows he will remain a second fiddle, as sharp and brilliant as he may be; Bernard Arnault, symmetrically, knows everything his success owes to Godé and his ego suffers from it."

"He wants to carry out a capital increase in which the Willots would not subscribe, which would result in their participation falling to a percentage (42%) that would no longer give them a say. The Willots do not want to let go. The situation is blocked. Pierre Godé then pulls out of his civil code an obsolete legal provision: the consumer loan. The new proposal is as follows: the Willots temporarily lend their shares to Bernard Arnault. He then carries out a capital increase, avoids liquidation, pilots the recovery of the company, a recovery from which they will benefit, as minority shareholders, when they have recovered their shares."

"In mid-February 1999, Pierre Godé and James Lieber, the group's attorney for sensitive affairs, met with Nicolas Waldmann in Paris, accompanied by Thomas Helsby, the head of Kroll Associates' London office. The objective of the meeting was to launch an investigation into Gucci as well as its two main leaders, Domenico De Sole and Tom Ford. A letter from Kroll, addressed to the leaders of LVMH, dated February 16th, was clear: "Your group currently holds a significant stake in a foreign company," Nicolas Waldmann wrote to Pierre Godé."

"Could it be by the operation of the Holy Spirit that Bernard Arnault's fortune was multiplied by 200 in ten years? If not, how did he get rich? Pierre Godé's explanation is brief: Bernard Arnault, he says, "made personal operations above LVMH" and "bought shares directly". But where did the money come from? Are the sophisticated structures of the Arnault galaxy in the nineties as clear as Godé claims? Or are they as dark as Gaudino writes?"

"In mid-June 1999, Pierre Godé asked Kroll France to verify if one of Kroll's offices in the United States had worked on the Executive Life Crédit Lyonnais case and if there were any exploitable information regarding François Pinault. This affair has been poisoning Franco-American relations since 1998. It all started with an anonymous denunciation by a French businessman. Crédit Lyonnais is accused of having set up, with the support of MAAF Assurances, a holding system to take over, in 1991, part of the assets of the bankrupt American insurance company Executive Life, particularly its heavily depreciated junk bond portfolio. However, American law at the time prohibited a bank from owning assets in the insurance sector."

"He agrees to take over the management, but wishes to drop the public works part of its activity, to focus only on the real estate development part, which he considers more conducive to value creation. He surrounds himself with highly qualified executives: Michel Lefebvre, the "giant" of communication and sales, Hughes Motte, a highly skilled technician, Alain Dinin, as secretary-general, today the president of Nexity, Georges Pons, former lawyer and legal director, and finally, he benefits from the advice of Pierre Godé, at the time a lawyer at the Lille bar. Ferret-Savinel becomes Ferinel, specializing in holiday residences by the sea and in the mountains and in housing construction. In this context, he has business relations with Jean-Pierre Willot and his real estate service that are looking to enhance the industrial wastelands of BSF and transform them into building plots."

"After just over two years in New York and having completed his American managerial experience, he turned his attention back to France. From the spring of 1984, he asked Michel Lefebvre and Pierre Godé, who had become a professor of commercial law at the University of Nice, to scout potential business acquisition files and make proposals to him. At the same time, he shared his plans with contacts he maintained in New York with two personalities: Claude Gros, who heads the IDI office in the United States, and François Polge de Combret, former Deputy Secretary General of the Élysée under Giscard d'Estaing, partner of the Lazard bank in New York."

"• The Ferinel plan is being implemented. It incorporates elements already analyzed by the management and the current team, contained in the three-year plan (1984-1986) and relies on various diagnostics provided by expert firms: A. D. Little, etc. Hughes de Lasteyrie, assistant director of Dreyfus bank supervises its writing, which I actively participate in, along with the financial director and the administrative director of the headquarters, under the vigilant eye and following the indications of Bernard Arnault and Pierre Godé. The Ferinel group thus proposes a sustainable solution to ensure the recovery and permanence of the Agache-Willot group by relying on the prior takeover of SFFAW and by integrating the Compagnie Boussac Saint Frères into the Agache-Willot group: - legally, the agreement signed with Mr. Willot on November 14, 1984 ensures the takeover of SFFAW, resolves the complex legal problems that condition the survival of the Agache-Willot group and allows for the presentation of a concordatory solution; • - On the industrial and social level, the plan includes restructuring measures already presented to the public authorities and currently being implemented; • - On the economic and financial level, a capital increase of 400 million francs for SFFAW is planned, to be carried out by private investors brought in by the Ferinel group and Dreyfus bank. This will be carried out as soon as the concordat is approved."

"It is time to return to France to buy a company. "Find it for me," he tells Pierre Godé. Which one does he want? He has no idea. However, when he goes to Bloomingdale's to buy a blue bathrobe with a red border and a suit, he chooses Dior and thinks: "There is no more beautiful name. In the United States, the president of Dior is better known than the president of the French Republic..." Prophetic."

"A few hours later, Anthony Tennant and his Lazard Brothers20 and Indosuez bankers meet with the Dior president and his loyalists, Robert Léon and Pierre Godé."