L’Oreal heiress loses control of €14.5bn fortune

FRANCE’S richest woman, the cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettencourt, was ordered to be placed under the legal protection of relatives by a French court yesterday in the latest twist in a family drama worthy of television’s Dallas or Dynasty.

Lawyers for the L’Oreal heiress said a judge ordered the 88-year-old French billionaire and her fortune be placed under the legal protection of her daughter and grandsons.

Bettencourt lawyer Jean-Rene Farthouat called the decision by a judge in the western Paris suburb of Courbevoie “profoundly disappointing”.

He said he planned to appeal. “It is a decision that is deeply disappointing that I will find hard to inform Mrs Bettencourt about,” he said.

The order goes into effect immediately.

Bettencourt’s heirs reportedly are concerned about her health and management of her fortune, estimated at €14.5 billion by Forbes magazine.

She is a major shareholder in cosmetics giant L’Oreal, which was founded by her father Eugene Schueller in 1907.

The daughter, Francoise Meyers-Bettencourt, and her mother have waged a years-long battle over the management of the fortune, but late last year appeared to have resolved their legal dispute over more than €1bn.

French daily Le Monde said the judge’s decision was based in part on a court-ordered medical examination that found the heiress suffered from “moderately severe” Alzheimer’s disease.

In a recent television interview, Bettencourt sharply criticised the attempts to put her under her daughter’s legal guardianship, calling it “a monstrous idiocy.”

She had long refused to undergo the medical examination to evaluate her mental capacities before ultimately agreeing to it earlier this year.

She also told a French newspaper that she would flee abroad if the judge ruled to give her daughter guardianship.

Her lawyer now says there is no question of Bettencourt leaving the country to escape the judge’s ruling.

Bettencourt’s daughter had publicly accused celebrity photographer Francois-Marie Banier of abusing her mother’s alleged mental frailty and abusing her trust to defraud Liliane Bettencourt out of €1bn, artworks and other gifts.

Banier, a longtime friend of Bettencourt’s, has insisted he did not take advantage of her, but the dispute prompted a string of legal cases.

As the mother-daughter dispute escalated, Bettencourt raised questions about the future of the world’s biggest cosmetics company once her daughter inherits it.

The Bettencourt family currently has a 31% stake, with Nestle of Switzerland the second-largest stakeholder.

Bettencourt and her daughter declared a truce in December in a long-running legal feud, during which Meyers-Bettencourt withdrew her request to have her mother placed under the supervision of a guardian, and the two made a show of unity.

The dispute, which sparked investigations into allegations, denied by Bettencourt, of tax evasion and illegal funding of ruling UMP party members, reignited in the summer when Bettencourt said her daughter needed to seek psychological help.

Doctors had advised appointing a guardian in June, but that request was dismissed on a technicality after an appeals court said the request was invalid.

At the end of August French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office denied allegations published in a national newspaper he was handed cash by the L’Oreal heiress for his 2007 election campaign.