PARIS: French businesswoman and billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, whose family founded L’Oreal and still owns the largest stake in the cosmetics giant, has died aged 94, her daughter said on Thursday.
Bettencourt, listed by Forbes as the world’s richest woman, was the heiress to the beauty and comestics company her father founded just over a century ago as a maker of hair dye.
Her death opens a new phase for L’Oreal, France’s fourth-largest listed company, altering the relationship it has with key shareholder Nestle, the Swiss food company.
Bettencourt and her family owned 33 percent of the company. Her daughter Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, who sits on L’Oreal’s board along with her own son, said in a statement the family remained committed to the company and its management team.
“My mother left peacefully,” Bettencourt-Meyers said, adding that she had died during Wednesday night at her home in Paris.
“I would like to reiterate, on behalf of our family, our entire commitment and loyalty to L’Oreal and to renew my confidence in its President Jean-Paul Agon and his teams worldwide.”
In 2011 Agon was appointed chairman and chief executive of L’Oreal, owner of the Lancome and Maybelline beauty and make-up brands and of Garnier shampoos.
Nestle, which owns just over 23 percent of L’Oreal, had agreed with the founding family that the two parties could not increase their stakes during Liliane Bettencourt’s lifetime and for at least six months after her death.
The Swiss company has been a major investor since 1974, when Bettencourt entrusted nearly half of her own stake in the firm to Nestle in exchange for a three percent holding in the Swiss company. She made the move out of fear that L’Oreal might be nationalized if the Socialists came to power in France.
Activist hedge fund Third Point recently urged Nestle — which brought in a new chief executive, Mark Schneider, earlier this year — to sell down its stake as part of efforts to improve its performance.
A Nestle spokeswoman on Thursday did not comment on the company’s stake, only saying: “It’s time to send our sincere condolences to Madame Bettencourt’s family.”
LEGAL BATTLES
Fascination with Bettencourt’s wealth, complex family relations and scandal-tinged life often propelled her into society pages and headlines, though she remained private and rarely gave interviews.
Her net worth was estimated at $39.5 billion earlier this year by Forbes, making her the world’s richest woman and among the 20 wealthiest people in the world.
In a testament to the influence L’Oreal came to have in France, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Thursday praised the stability Bettencourt had brought to the company through her ownership and said in a statement he hoped that the firm would maintain its close ties with its home market.
The marriage of the heiress to French politician Andre Bettencourt drew scrutiny when it emerged he had written anti-Semitic tracts at the start of World War Two. And Bettencourt was caught up in high-profile legal feuds almost until the last.
She had been under the guardianship of family members since a court fight, known as the “Bettencourt affair,” ended with a ruling in 2011 that she was incapable of looking after her fortune because she suffered from dementia and had been exploited.
The case — brought by her daughter Françoise and which soured relations between the two — centered on Francois-Marie Banier, a celebrity photographer who befriended Bettencourt in the 1980s and received lavish gifts from her, including life insurance policies worth $400 million.
Another strand of the sprawling affair later led to allegations of illegal payments by Bettencourt to members of the French government associated with former president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2010. Sarkozy was eventually cleared in the case.
Paris-born Bettencourt joined her father Eugene Schueller’s firm as an apprentice at the age of 15, mixing cosmetics and labelling bottles of shampoo.
She inherited the family fortune when her father Eugene Schueller, a chemist, died in 1957, though she delegated the day-to-day management of the firm. A widow since 2007, Bettencourt ceased to sit on L’Oreal’s board in 2012.
Billionaire L’Oreal heiress Bettencourt dies aged 94
Billionaire L’Oreal heiress Bettencourt dies aged 94
In southeast Pakistan, Ramadan brings Hindus and Muslims closer
MITHI: Partab Shivani, a Hindu in Muslim-majority Pakistan, has fasted on and off during Ramadan for years, but this time is different as he practices abstinence for the entire holy month.
Every year, he and his friends in the southeastern city of Mithi arrange iftar, when Muslims break their daily fast, to foster peace and solidarity between the two religions.
“I believe we need to promote interfaith harmony. First, we are humans — religions came later,” Shivani, a 48-year-old social activist, told AFP, adding that he also reads the teachings of the Buddha.
“His message is about peace and ending war. Peace can spread through solidarity and by standing with one another. Distance only widens the gap between people,” he added.
Ninety-six percent of Pakistan’s 240 million people are Muslim. Just two percent are Hindu, most of them living in rural areas of Sindh province where Mithi is located.
In Mithi itself, most of the 60,000 inhabitants are Hindu.
Many of the city’s Hindus also observe Ramadan and iftar has become a social gathering where people from both faiths happily participate.
“This has been a wonderful tradition of ours for a very long time,” said Mir Muhammad Buledi, a 51-year-old Muslim friend who attended Shivani’s iftar gathering.
“It is a beautiful example of harmony between the two communities.”
Like brothers
Discrimination against minorities runs deep in Pakistan.
Following the end of British rule in South Asia in 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
That triggered widespread religious bloodshed in which hundreds of thousands were killed and millions displaced.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, freedom of religion or belief is under constant threat, with religiously motivated violence and discrimination increasing yearly.
State authorities, often using religious unrest for political gain, have failed to address the crisis, the independent non-profit says.
But such tensions are absent in Mithi.
“I am a Hindu but I keep all the fasts during this month,” said Sushil Malani, a local politician. “I feel happy standing with my Muslim brothers.
“We celebrate Eid together as well. This tradition in the region is very old.”
Restaurants and tea stalls are closed across Pakistan during Ramadan.
Ramesh Kumar, a 52-year-old Hindu man who sells sweets and savoury items outside a Muslim shrine, keeps his push cart covered and closed until iftar.
“There is no discrimination among us if someone is Muslim or Hindu. I have been seeing this since my childhood that we all live together like brothers,” he said.
Muslim shrine, Hindu caretaker
Locals say Mithi’s peaceful religious coexistence can be traced to its remote location, emerging from the sand dunes of the Tharparkar desert, which borders the modern Indian state of Rajasthan.
Cows — considered sacred in Hinduism — roam freely in Mithi city, as they do in neighboring India.
At two Sufi Muslim shrines in the middle of the city, Hindu families arrange meals, bringing fruit, meals and juices for their Muslim neighbors to break their fasts.
“We respect Muslims,” said Mohan Lal Malhi, a Hindu caretaker of one of the shrines.
Mohan said his parents and elders taught him to respect people regardless of religion or color, and the traditions pass from one generation to the next.
Local residents said both communities consider their social relationships more important than their religious identity.
“You will see a (Sikh) gurdwara, a mosque, and a shrine standing side by side here,” Mohan said. “The atmosphere of this area teaches humanity.”
