Last year, LVMH lost a battle for control of Gucci, after Gucci thwarted overtures by the LVMH owner Bernard Arnault and sold a controlling stake to the big French retail group controlled by the French investor Francois Pinault, a rival of Mr. Arnault.
The French retail market is usually highly profitable.
The bank's French retail operations remained flat at 2.04 billion euros.
The French retail market is showing more resilience than that of the UK.
Go to work for Carrefour, the French retail giant, and you'll soon discover that it's no Wal-Mart.
The French retail giant Carrefour said on Monday that it was pulling out the country's vast retail market.
It began to move east by taking over a French retail chain in Madagascar and opening a huge store in Mauritius.
BNP Paribas is said to be keen to get its hands on one of them to boost its presence in French retail banking.
"Your wave is" was commissioned by the French retail billionaire François Pinault, who recently bought the Palazzo Grassi in order to display his own collections there.
Last month La Rinascente's Maurizio Borletti and other investors took over Printemps, a department-store chain, from PPR, a French retail and luxury-goods conglomerate.
Casino, a French retail chain, introduced carbon labels on 100 of its own-brand products in 2008 and has since added labels to another 400 items.
