Robert Louis-Dreyfus ( – ) was a businessman who had major success as
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of
Adidas-Salomon and
Saatchi & Saatchi. He was a majority
shareholder of the French
football team
Olympique de Marseille, and during his tenure they re-emerged as a major European football club.
Early life
Robert Louis-Dreyfus was born in
Paris. He was a great grandson of Leopold Dreyfus, who began buying and selling wheat in the
Alsace region a century earlier.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus was not an exceptional scholar, but he excelled at poker, winning considerable amounts of money from his rich friends at the
Lycee Janson de Sailly in Paris. In 1967, he spent time at a kibbutz and was involved in the
Six Day War. He later secured a place at
Harvard Business School with a presentation about his experiences during the war. He spent the early years of his working life mentored by
Siegmund Warburg, in the family business of the Louis-Dreyfus Group.
Business career
In 1982 Louis-Dreyfus joined IMS, the US pharmaceutical research company enjoying spectacular monetary success. His original grew twentyfold by the time the company was sold in 1988. He served as
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at
Saatchi & Saatchi, the
United Kingdom-based
advertising agency from 1989 to 1993. Louis-Dreyfus invested his own money in Saatchi and Saatchi and during his tenure the agency grew...
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