Nike Appoints LVMH’s Alexandre Arnault to Its Board of Directors

Nike has given a board seat to a man who has spent his career selling champagne, cognac, jewelry and suitcases. Alexandre Arnault is 34, and he holds the deputy chief executive title at Moët Hennessy, LVMH’s wines and spirits arm, reporting to its president and chief executive Jean-Jacques Guiony. Nike’s board elected him on Sept. 15 and put the announcement out after the close on Sept. 16, taking the board to 12 directors.

Shareholders had voted only the week before. At the annual meeting on Sept. 8 they elected a slate of 11 directors that did not include Arnault, and the board then enlarged itself to seat him. Nike’s 8-K sets his initial term to expire at the 2027 annual meeting, when shareholders get their first vote on him, and grants him restricted Class B stock valued at $200,000 that he forfeits if he leaves inside a year. His committee assignments have not been decided. His Form 4 shows the grant at 5,171 shares against 30,171 afterwards, so he already owned 25,000 Nike shares.

Executive chairman Mark Parker said in the announcement that Arnault “has earned a reputation for helping iconic global brands evolve, innovate and grow in a changing, complex marketplace.” Rimowa is the credential that fits Nike’s situation best. Arnault brought the German case maker into LVMH in 2016 and then spent four years running it, a stretch the Financial Times reads as turning a maker of hard-wearing luggage into a fashion label able to charge accordingly. Tiffany & Co. came next, four years with product, communications and industrial operations under him.

Sport is not new ground for the group. LVMH signed a ten-year partnership with Formula 1 that began in 2025, and Arnault’s own division is part of it: LVMH’s first-half results have Moët & Chandon opening its second season as the official champagne of Formula 1 races, with wines and spirits profit up 11 percent to €582 million.

He joins Nike at the bottom. The shares closed at $35.78 on Sept. 16, a 12-year closing low, against a peak north of $170 in November 2021. That is a fall of about 80 percent, leaving the company worth about $53 billion. The stock recovered 1.6 percent the next day. It had already hit a 12-year low in August and $40 in July, and Nike leaves the S&P 100 on Sept. 21.

What Nike Wants From a Luxury Executive

Some of the job is visible in Nike’s own numbers. On the fourth-quarter call in June, then chief financial officer Matt Friend said that in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, off-price sales were “down over 50% following aggressive actions to reduce promotions,” which produced “a 15 point improvement in full price realization.” Chief executive Elliott Hill, on Nike Direct, put it plainly: “We’re discounting less on Nike Digital.” Nike spent years teaching its customers to wait for a markdown and is now trying to unteach them.

The two of them have made a product together once. In March 2023, while Arnault ran product and communications at Tiffany, the jeweler and Nike released the Air Force 1 1837, black suede with the jeweler’s blue on the swoosh, at $400. A standard Air Force 1 lists at $115 on Nike’s site today. The design was panned when it was announced, and Retail Dive collected the complaint that February, which came down to $400 for a colorway.

Buyers took a different view. The 1837 has averaged $1,336 across 87 sales on StockX over the past three months.

Running Is Moving the Other Way

Price, in the part of Nike that sells to runners, is going down. The Alphafly 4 arrived in limited numbers on Sept. 17, the day after the announcement, at $280, and sold out in under five minutes. The Alphafly 3 it succeeds launched at $285 in January 2024, lists at $295 on Nike’s site, and is being discounted there now. So Nike’s new flagship racer costs less than the shoe it replaces, in a year when the rest of the company is trying to stop discounting. Nike says it is 5 percent lighter in a men’s 8.5 and returns 10 percent more energy than the Alphafly 3. Wide release is Oct. 29.

Running is also the piece of the company that has been working, which is why Nike built so much of this year around the Alphafly. On the June call Hill counted a fifth straight quarter of double-digit growth in the division and about $1 billion of revenue added across those five quarters. In statement footwear, the expensive end, he put the fiscal 2026 share gain across Western Europe and North America at five points, “more than any other Top 5 brand.” The year has been harder at the sharp end, where adidas and Brooks took the marathon and mile world records in April and July.

Nike reports its first quarter on Oct. 1, the first set of numbers with Arnault on the board.