THE INDEPENDENT: Cosmetics giant's elderly matriarch faces challenge from angry daughter over shock bequest. John Lichfield reports from Paris
An unseemly mother-daughter dispute threatens to smudge the glittering public face of L'Oréal, the world's most successful cosmetics company. The mental capacity of L'Oréal's chief shareholder, Liliane Bettencourt, 86, to manage her €23bn (£20.5bn) fortune has been challenged by her only child, Françoise.
Mme Bettencourt, one of the world's wealthiest women and a renowned philanthropist, is reported to have funded life insurance policies worth nearly €1bn which benefit a jet-set photographer, artist and author whom she has befriended. Her daughter has brought a legal action which suggests that her mother's great age makes her vulnerable to "abuse".
The complaint was first made almost a year ago but details have just emerged in the French press. An investigative website, Bakchich.info, reported that police had discreetly interviewed both Mme Bettencourt and the man who is said to have become virtually her adopted son, François-Marie Banier. L'Oréal Heiress Gives €1bn to Photographer 'Because He's Worth It' >>> Monday, December 15, 2008
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