Newly appointed head of the Leroy Merlin group, Agathe Monpays has been the subject of suspicion over her links with the Mulliez family association, which holds 80% of the company’s capital. It turns out the 28-year-old is not related to the owners.
A new episode of nepotism among large French companies? This is the rumor that has circulated in recent hours on social networks, several Internet users denouncing the recent appointment of Agathe Monpays at the head of the company Leroy Merlin. According to them, the full name of the new general manager would be Agathe Monpays … Mulliez. As a reminder, the Mulliez family association holds 80% of the capital of Leroy Merlin. Enough to cast doubt on the real motivations of this appointment.
According to La Voix du Nord, the 28-year-old young woman actually has no family ties with the northern family. The daily evokes “a confusion” resulting from “several portraits of the young woman evoking the fact that she has always been in the “Mulliez galaxy”” like Le Figaro which described her this weekend as “a pure product Mulliez”.
A meteoric rise in just seven years
It is true that Agathe Monpays has never worked elsewhere than within the group owned by the Mulliez family since the end of her studies at the IESEG Business School management school based in Lille. In the last years of her studies, she began her career in the direct marketing department in the ready-to-wear group Happy Chic (Jules, Pimkie) of which the Mulliez family association is the main shareholder.
At the start of the 2016 school year, she joined the ranks of Leroy Merlin France within the Adeo group, which is effectively part of the Mulliez family association. She began her rise in the company as sector manager of the store in the town of La Sentinelle, on the outskirts of Valenciennes. Four years later, she became manager of the Tourcoing store, still in the north of France. At the end of September, she participated in strengthening the brand abroad by becoming general manager in Greece and Cyprus. She will only stay there for a year before her succession to Thomas Bouret as CEO becomes effective.
