2023-08-26 06:00:34
This house located Villa Montmorency, an enclave for the rich located in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Dominique Desseigne had specially chosen it and had it fitted out with a medical bed and accessibility for the needs of his wife, Diane, horribly injured in a plane crash. in 1995. It was there that she spent the last years of her life in a wheelchair, interspersed with dozens of hospital stays. There, too, that his two children, Alexandre and Joy, grew up. It was under this same roof, finally, that the eldest, aged 36, decided to brutally eject his father from his position as CEO of the Barrière group, which he had held for more than twenty years. A group ? Rather, an empire: 32 casinos, 19 luxury hotels, some 150 restaurants and nearly 7,000 employees.
What was so painfully tied up in this spacious home that the relationship between father and son suddenly turned into a nightmare? The small business world was horrified when it learned, in April, of the brutal dismissal of Mr. Desseigne, 78, from all his executive functions. When his son Alexandre announced that he had officially erased his father’s surname from his civil status to be renamed Barrière, after his late mother’s name, the same observers understood that there was no question of this. a banal story of succession. Change of name, how better to signify, in fact, his detestation of a parent?
No one around the family had realized that such hatred had lurked in the cozy salons of the Villa Montmorency. Certainly, we did not see much of the father and his son together. When he is not working, the first, mane in the wind, likes to survey film festivals, sunbathe in hot regions and play tennis; his son, his hair cut short, his eyebrows still frowning, shuns worldliness and only seems to like cold countries.
The punto banco room at Club Barrière, on the Champs-Elysées, in Paris, July 27, 2022. BENJAMIN GIRETTE FOR “THE WORLD”
Even in Deauville (Calvados), the historic stronghold of the family’s fortune, which has three palaces, a casino and several restaurants there, they just cross paths. The father regularly spends his winter weekends at the Normandy, on the seafront, where he perfects his tennis backhand when the son settles down for a handful of days in the summer at the Hôtel du Golf, in the grounds, the time of the polo tournament and the presentation of the Diane-Barrière Trophy.
Despite everything, from the outside, the agreement could appear good. Didn’t the two men work together in the group since 2014? Hadn’t the son regularly taken the lead since then, to become director of strategy and development? And, above all, didn’t Alexandre live with his father in the famous house of Villa Montmorency until the age of 35? Rather rare at this age when you have the means to live where you want. He shouldn’t feel too bad about it. This is, in any case, what Dominique Desseigne wanted to believe, whom his friends describe as “king of denial”. Despite his age and a slight Parkinson’s disease that he treats and no longer conceals, he still wears good looks, but he is a deeply saddened man and in a state of amazement that his relatives have never ceased to comfort.
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