Galeries Lafayette group promotes three senior executives

The Galeries Lafayette group continues to reshuffle its senior executive team. After appointing Arthur Lemoine as CEO in early July, succeeding Nicolas Houzé, the French department store group has announced three promotions to senior posts from within its ranks. The first regards Guillaume Houzé, until now in charge of brand image and communication, who has been named managing director image and innovation.

Guillaume Houzé, brother of Nicolas, joined the group in 2008. He has also been a member of the executive committee since 2020, and is the president of Lafayette Anticipations, the group’s corporate foundation.

His promotion is a way of recognising “the work carried out in the last 15 years to position the Galeries Lafayette group as a high-calibre business and cultural player, both in France and internationally. With this new, cross-functional orientation, the group confirms its willingness to capitalise on creativity and technology in its differentiation strategy,” the group stated in a press release.

Emmanuelle Greth, who joined the group in summer 2024, has been appointed head of human resources and CSR. She previously worked at Sephora, as head of HR for the EMEA region, and at Canal+ and Guerlain.

Finally, Matthieu Caloni, who had been named head of finance, strategy and transformation in 2016, is the group’s newly appointed CFO. His promotion follows the departure at the end of June of Ugo Supino, who had been with the group for 25 years, lately as CFO. Caloni, a graduate of the ESSEC business school who has worked at LVMH and Thom Europe, “actively contributed to the deployment of many of the group’s transformation projects in the last 10 years,” said Galeries Lafayette.

All three executives will report to Nicolas Houzé, the new president of the group’s executive committee. He underlined that “by strengthening our governance with cross-functional responsibilities, and establishing clear accountability lines through Guillaume’s, Emmanuelle’s and Matthieu’s expertise, we are laying down the foundations for a more agile, consistent and forward-looking business model.”

The Galeries Lafayette group, which generates an annual revenue of €4.5 billion and employs 8,500 people, comprises the Galeries Lafayette department store chain (with 19 directly owned branches and 38 franchisees), as well as La Redoute, Louis Pion and Mauboussin. The group recently relinquished the running of the BHV Marais department store, and closed the Bazarchic e-shop.