Richemont has appointed Anton Rupert, the 39-year-old son of chairman Johann Rupert, as non-executive co-deputy chair, serving alongside existing deputy chair Bram Schot. Johann Rupert, 76, described the move as an important step in the board’s long-term succession planning, stressing a continued commitment to rigorous governance alongside creativity and craftsmanship across the group’s brands.
The co-deputy role has been split along functional lines. Anton will oversee the Maisons’ strategic product and communications committee, a position intended to preserve continuity in creative and commercial direction across brands such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Montblanc. Schot retains responsibility for board governance, committee coordination and the broader corporate governance framework.
Anton, who carries his grandfather’s name, has kept a notably low public profile and rarely gives interviews; his most visible prior board role was a directorship at pre-owned watch retailer Watchfinder. That low-key positioning stands in contrast to succession battles elsewhere in luxury. At LVMH, Bernard Arnault, whose fortune Bloomberg estimates at $142 billion, has had to publicly deny reports of a rift among his five children as they take on senior roles across the group, while Kering’s Pinault family has been easing a third-generation heir onto its boards. Richemont’s announcement, by comparison, reads as deliberately gradual rather than contested.
That jewellery division’s 24% growth rate, cited in the original report, applies specifically to the Jewellery Maisons rather than the group as a whole, whose Q1 sales rose 20% at constant exchange rates; the distinction is worth keeping clear since the two figures are often run together. The jewellery unit has now delivered seven consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, with the Americas up 27%, Japan up 36%, Asia Pacific up 21%, Europe up 11% and the Middle East and Africa lagging at 3%, all at constant rates.
The succession announcement also follows a recent governance fight at board level. Activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners had pushed for Francesco Trapani, a former LVMH-linked Italian luxury executive, to be elected as a dedicated representative for “A” shareholders, alongside proposals to enlarge the board and shift Richemont’s focus toward hard luxury, which Bluebell argued could double the share price over the medium term. Johann Rupert opposed Trapani’s candidacy and backed Wendy Luhabe instead, who won shareholder support with 83.97% of the vote against Trapani’s 9.50%, and all of Bluebell’s proposed amendments were voted down.
That contest underscores why control at board level matters so much at Richemont. The group runs a dual-class share structure: A shares and B shares carry one vote each individually, but the 537.6 million unlisted B shares collectively control 50% of total voting power despite representing only about 9.1% of equity. Compagnie Financière Rupert, the Rupert family’s holding vehicle, owns all the B shares plus a small number of A shares, giving the family 50.6% of voting rights from just 10.18% of the company’s capital, a roughly fourfold gap between economic ownership and control. It is that voting bloc, rather than Richemont’s free-floating shares, that ultimately determines who leads the group, making Anton’s appointment within it the real marker of succession. The family, whose combined fortune Bloomberg estimates at $20 billion (R324 billion), collected a record $277 million (R4.49 billion) dividend from Richemont earlier in 2026.