Welcome to Richemont’s 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

Richemont has a long-standing commitment to doing business responsibly. Building trust in our Maisons – our operating companies and brands – lies at the heart of the way we work.

In this, our third online report, you can read about how we are living out this commitment. We outline the progress we have made in our 2007/2008 financial year in the areas where we have the most significant social, ethical and environmental impact. This includes:

• ensuring product excellence and customer service
• improving our environmental impact
• being a responsible employer
• investing in local communities
• strengthening our approach to responsible procurement

This report is aimed at our key stakeholders - employees, customers, shareholders, investors, business partners and suppliers and local communities. It will also be of interest to other groups such as the cultural community and regulators.

We welcome your feedback on our performance and reporting. To contact us, please click here.

Chairman’s introduction

Richemont owns some of the world’s finest luxury goods businesses. Our Maisons are known for creating products of exquisite beauty and unrivalled quality for our clients.

We are privileged to be the custodians of these entities and our philosophy is to extend the renown of each of the businesses over the long term, respecting their individuality and heritage. We have always recognised the need to achieve this in a manner which is environmentally sustainable and socially responsible.

Whilst the Group as a whole and our Maisons have always applied these criteria in their business practices, over the past few years we have sought to develop a consistent approach across all our businesses. This has resulted in the development of our corporate social responsibility guidelines.

The guidelines include our philosophy towards the environment. We continue to make progress in measuring our impacts and putting in place processes to reduce these. This year we conducted our second audit of our global ‘carbon footprint’. This showed that although the Group’s emissions had increased in absolute terms, factoring in the growth of the business and the increased number of employees, energy efficiency had improved. We will offset the Group’s total carbon footprint for the current year, whilst continuing to work to reduce energy consumption and CO₂ emissions.

I am confident in the progress we have made during the past year, but this must be seen as part of a long, continuing process. We will embed the good work we have done so far and set challenging goals for ourselves to continuously improve our performance in the future.

Johann Rupert
Executive Chairman