Who is Téthys Invest, Sézane’s new shareholder?

By

Sarah Ahssen

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Sep 5, 2022

Téthys Invest, a subsidiary of Téthys, the main shareholder of L'Oréal, has recently acquired a stake in Sézane, the successful French ready-to-wear label founded by Morgane Sézalory in 2013. This is the first investment in the fashion industry made by Sézane’s new minority shareholder, as detailed in the following profile.

Téthys Invest was created in 2016 by Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the granddaughter and heiress of the founder of global beauty giant L'Oréal, with her husband Jean-Pierre Meyers. Téthys Invest’s corporate website describes the firm as an investment fund focused on “undertaking direct long-term investments in entrepreneurial projects.”

The firm can tap the financial might of its parent company, Téthys, the Bettencourt-Meyers’s family holding company and the L'Oréal group's majority shareholder, with a stake of approximately 33%. The L’Oréal group, owner of brands like Lancôme, L’Oréal Paris and Garnier, is currently valued at €200 billion.

Téthys Invest has very close ties with the L’Oréal group. Its managing director Alexandre Benais notably worked for merchant bank Lazard, with which he acted as adviser to L’Oréal in 2014 when the latter bought back 8% of his own capital from Nestlé.
 
Téthys Invest was created to carry out direct diversification investments in a variety of sectors, and made its first investment in 2017 by acquiring a minority stake in French private healthcare group Elsan. An operation whose value was estimated at between €150 million and €200 million.
 
In 2018, Téthys Invest bought a stake in private education group Galileo Global Education, and in 2020, as part of an investor consortium, it became a shareholder in Ceva Santé Animale, a multinational veterinary medicine group.

Until now, Téthys Invest had steered clear of the fashion industry. By becoming a long-term investor in Sézane, it could also enable the label, currently featuring a limited beauty line, to make a fully fledged entrance into the cosmetics world.