PARTNERSHIP MATTERS

TAG Heuer CEO Frédéric Arnault firmly believes that one needs good partners to achieve success. From the Connected Watch to Ryan Gosling and Porsche, we get into it with him

- ASHOK SOMAN

TAG Heuer has had some famous leaders over its 185 years. Of course, the brand is defined by the era of Jack Heuer, who developed and introduced most of the collections that are emblematic of the brand today. This century alone has seen TAG Heuer under the leadership of industry legends such as Jean-Christophe Babin (now of Bulgari), Jean-Claude Biver (no introduction necessary) and Stephane Bianchi (now head of LVMH Watch and Jewellery).

Today, the brand is the domain of another famous name, Arnault. CEO Frédéric Arnault is perhaps best-known as the son of LVMH supremo Bernard Arnault, one of the world's richest people (some say the richest, depending on how Elon Musk is tweeting) and definitely Europe's richest man. That is of course unfair, and we bring it up now just to get it out of the way. Just using the surname Arnault in an LVMH-related story will have you thinking immediately of the senior Arnault, so there is no avoiding it. In our conversation with Frédéric Arnault, we did not discuss his family - except for one specific mention, related to his first watch and the standard publicity strictures around the young CEO (he is 26) preclude any personal questions. This is not unusual, in itself, because plenty of CEOs do not put themselves at the center of their brand's narratives.