French Protestors Target LVMH Headquarters in Paris

Protestors taking the streets against the French government’s plan to raise the retirement age briefly entered LVMH’s headquarters Thursday, calling for companies and the rich to contribute more to finance pensions.

Luxury conglomerate LVMH and its chairman, Bernard Arnault—who surpassed Tesla founder Elon Musk late last year to become the world’s richest person—have become regular flashpoints in French public debate, as workers lash out against mounting inequality and what they see as unjust measures to rebalance government spending by President Emmanuel Macron.

At LVMH’s headquarters on Paris’ Avenue Montaigne, scores of protestors were seen flooding into the lobby and up the main staircase, some brandishing red flares. An organiser speaking on France’s BFM news channel stressed that the intervention, which only lasted a few minutes, was “peaceful and symbolic.”

Thursday’s protest happened on the margins of France’s 12th day of nationwide strikes and demonstrations since March, when Macron overrode a “no” vote in parliament and pushed through a plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. A French high court is set to rule Friday on the constitutionality of the measure.

Images of flares, smoke bombs, and burning rubbish around Paris’ iconic Champs-Elysées and Avenue Montaigne have recalled the Yellow Vest protests that overran France in 2018 and 2019.

However, while Yellow Vest protestors repeatedly sacked boutiques and vandalised public monuments, the vast anti-retirement protests have been mostly peaceful.