Bernard Arnault says laid-off Meta staff were ‘promoted outwards’ — and LVMH’s Tiffany is doing the same

Bernard Arnault is worth more than $200 billion. 

Bernard Arnault drew parallels between layoffs at Tiffany & Co. and job cuts at Meta on an earnings call Tuesday.

The CEO of luxury conglomerate LVMH said he last week talked with Mark Zuckerberg about letting low-performing Meta staff go. Arnault said those workers were being “promoted outwards, so to speak.”

The pair, who are worth a combined $445 billion, might have had a moment to chat about layoffs at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, which they both attended last week.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (far left), Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos, CEO Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony of President Donald Trump. 

Arnault added on the call: “We didn’t have a choice. At Tiffany, we had to let go some people.”

He described the luxury jewelry brand as a “sleeping beauty” that was awakened in 2021 after being acquired by LVMH.

“When you’re used to sleeping for 10 years, and you’re all of a sudden asked to become fierce, and when you’re expected to achieve high objectives, some people can’t,” he said. “Unfortunately, we were not able to keep everyone.”

His comments come shortly after Meta announced a new round of layoffs.

B-17 reported last week that Hillary Champion, Meta’s director of people development growth programs, described the jobs in an internal memo as “non-regrettable attrition.”

Meta is not the only company using linguistic somersaults when it comes to job cuts — possibly to make them sound more positive or attempt to maintain the morale of remaining employees.

Amazon often describes layoffs as “unregretted attrition,” while TechCrunch recently told B-17 that job cuts were necessary to meet the company’s “evolving needs.”