Robert Louis-Dreyfus

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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