Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Interesting. I'm sure, given that Bernard has masterfully exploited family splintering in other brands in the past with a notable exception of Gucci, but he's not going to let that happen to his own family anytime soon. It appears to be pretty genuine too that they're close. They seem to spend lots of time together. They've all mentioned family dinners often growing up. Alexandre often mentions how he got an MBA from birth, always talking about the business, but that does imply Dad was always at dinner, wasn't just raised by mom. I do think there's actually a very close family dynamic here. Unlike other succession battles, which are highly reported—I think the Murdoch family is a great one, people leaking things about each other—this seems ridiculously amicable. I don't know if it's just very French and proper, but they all seem to have great working relationships with each other. A striking thing about the kids in the family is that, at least most, if not all of them doesn't seem like they were gifted these positions. They came up through the business and "earned" it, but earned their positions in much the same way that Bernard did in his own family company. Alexandria is a great example. He went to Polytechnique. Those are blind admissions tests.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.