Chanel Appoints Hélène de Tissot as Global Chief Financial Officer

Chanel is putting a 15-year era to bed and handing its multi-billion dollar ledger to an outsider from the alcohol industry. The luxury powerhouse has hired Pernod Ricard veteran Hélène de Tissot as its next Global Chief Financial Officer. She replaces Philippe Blondiaux, the brand’s long-standing financial anchor who is retiring later this year. De Tissot will come to Chanel’s London headquarters this October for a brief handover before taking absolute control of the keys in January 2027 under CEO Leena Nair.

De Tissot started out as an international tax lawyer, grinding through a nine-year stint at Arthur Andersen before the accounting giant historically collapsed in 2002. She pivoted to the corporate world, joining wine and spirits conglomerate Pernod Ricard. Over the next 23 years, she climbed from a tax director to the regional CFO for Asia in Hong Kong, eventually spending nearly a decade on the executive committee running global finance and IT.

She inherits a balance sheet that is defying gravity. While the rest of the fashion world is panicking over a massive luxury slump, Chanel just bounced back from a quiet year to rake in a staggering $19.3 billion in total sales. Once the bills were paid, they walked away with a clean $4.71 billion in pure profit, proving that even when times are tough, people will still pay absolute top dollar for a classic quilted handbag.

By pairing de Tissot with CEO Leena Nair, a former Unilever executive, the brand is locking out insular fashion gatekeepers. Instead, they are trusting seasoned consumer-goods heavyweights to protect Chanel’s aggressive premium pricing strategy and keep the ship steady through a volatile retail landscape.