Key Takeaways:
- Longtime Club Med President Henri Giscard d’Estaing has resigned from the board of the company’s parent, Fosun Tourism
- Club Med’s business has rocketed post-Covid, dampening speculation that Fosun Tourism may be considering a sale of the French resort operator
By Edith Terry
Investors were surprisingly calm when Fosun Tourism Group (1992.HK) announced just before Christmas that its big-name co-CEO Henri Giscard d’Estaing, son of the late French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, was resigning several of his positions on the company’s board. That may owe partly to the fact that d’Estaing will continue to lead Club Med, a role he has held since 2001, well before Fosun International (0656.HK) bought the resort chain in 2015.
Instead, d’Estaing’s departure from the Fosun Tourism board looks more like a signal of a shift now happening at the parent company, which is trying to broaden its focus beyond the Club Med chain that currently accounts for the lion’s share of its business. It could also signal the start of a gradual pullback for d’Estaing from the company with his advancing age. He is now 66.
Under Fosun’s ownership, d’Estaing recast Club Med from “a purveyor of packaged hedonism” to an upmarket, multicultural, family-friendly resort chain. Having found new life for the brand, he will retain his positions as co-CEO of Fosun Tourism and president of Club Med, Fosun Tourism said in its announcement on Dec. 22. But he resigned his roles as executive director and vice chairman of the Fosun Tourism board effective of the announcement’s date.
Fosun Tourism’s stock rose less than 1% the day after the announcement. But it lost about half of its value for all of last year and is down by a similar amount from its pre-pandemic levels, perhaps reflecting concerns about its parent’s financial condition and China’s slowing economy.
Fosun Tourism is a relative minnow in the global resort sector, paling in comparison to global leader Marriot International (NASDAQ: MAR), which is also one of the world’s largest hotel operators. The company also has yet to earn the kind of respect that its global ...