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# L'Oreal is now worth more than LVMH, and Louis Vuitton's owner has dropped out of Europe's top ten
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/loreal-overtakes-lvmh-europe-top-ten-luxury/
- Published: 2026-09-17T03:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T03:14:59.000Z
- Description: LVMH closed Tuesday at about EUR201 billion against L'Oreal's EUR203 billion, losing the French crown and its place in Europe's ten largest listed companies for the first time since 2017.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Markets, Business Bagel News

Five years ago LVMH was the most valuable listed company in Europe, and the argument for owning European shares was to a fair degree an argument for owning it. On Tuesday the owner of Louis Vuitton finished the day worth about EUR201 billion, which put it behind L'Oreal and knocked it out of Europe's ten largest listed companies for the first time since 2017.

L'Oreal's market value reached around EUR203 billion late in the day on LSEG's numbers, so the gap between the two is small enough to be rounding. The more telling number is the distance travelled. LVMH shares topped EUR900 apiece at the 2023 peak and have fallen roughly 55% since, a drawdown Bloomberg puts on a par with the one the group went through in the global financial crisis.

## What stopped selling

Three years of contraction sit behind this and the causes are not mysterious. Chinese demand for luxury has faded, conflict in the Middle East has more recently taken the spending out of key shopping hubs, and consultancy Bain reckons around 60 million consumers have turned their backs on luxury goods altogether as price rises pushed the category out of reach. Louis Vuitton, the group's most profitable label, has also been handling a consumer backlash in China over a trademark dispute with a local tea company, and several brokers have cut ratings and price targets. Reuters has LVMH down 35% for the year. L'Oreal, which makes high-end cosmetics for labels like Armani and Yves Saint Laurent as well as its own, is up 5%.

## The company Europe rates instead

The top ten LVMH has left is a different kind of list now. Reuters notes that the chipmaker ASML is worth three times as much as LVMH today, with Swiss pharmaceutical groups Roche and Novartis also ahead of it. The reversal has followed Bernard Arnault personally: he dropped out of the world's ten biggest fortunes last week on Bloomberg's billionaires index, leaving a mostly American and mostly technology roster at the top, and Forbes now puts Zara founder Amancio Ortega ahead of him as Europe's wealthiest person.

Neither company has commented, and Reuters says it approached both. The analysts it did reach were not offering much comfort. Stefan Bauknecht, an equity portfolio manager at DWS, said he does not see luxury trends improving significantly, and Berenberg's Nick Anderson reckons shoppers who can no longer afford the expensive items are indulging in small luxuries instead. Vincent Juvyns at ING Brussels went further, telling Bloomberg that those who claim Europe is back are wrong, because what LVMH tells us is that its main growth engine, luxury, is broken.