About Arnaud Lagesse — Biography of the Group CEO of IBL Together

01 — In brief

Arnaud Lagesse is Group Chief Executive Officer of IBL Together — formally IBL Ltd — the largest diversified group in Mauritius outside banking, and one of the largest in the wider Indian Ocean region. He was elected President of Business Mauritius, the national private-sector federation, on 30 September 2025.

He is a Mauritian citizen and resident. His formal education combines French management training — a Master's in Management from the Université d'Aix-Marseille and study at the Institut Supérieur de Gestion in Paris — with later executive programmes at INSEAD in France and the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in the United States.

His stated areas of competence, as recorded in IBL's own board disclosures, are business and finance, deal structuring, and strategic business development. That combination is legible in the shape of his career: the defining act of his tenure was not an operational turnaround but a structural one — the 2016 amalgamation that created IBL Ltd.

Beyond the group chief executive's role, he chairs a number of Mauritian companies and foundations and sits on several boards, including listed and non-listed entities. Those appointments are listed later on this page as disclosed publicly by IBL.

What follows is a chronological account. Where a claim rests on a specific public source — a corporate disclosure, an interview, a stock exchange filing or a press report — that is indicated. Where the discussion moves into broader analysis of the business environment, it is presented as such rather than attributed to him.

02 — Formation

Trained in management, formed in finance

A French management education, followed at intervals by executive programmes chosen for specific transitions — general management, then the disciplines of leading at group scale.

Arnaud Lagesse seated in a garden courtyard, photographed in black and white — Executive education has punctuated rather than preceded his career — taken alongside the roles it was meant to serve.

Master's in Management

Université d'Aix-Marseille, FranceGraduate degree

Graduate of the Institut Supérieur de Gestion

Paris, FranceManagement school

Executive Education Programme

INSEAD, Fontainebleau, FranceExecutive programme

Advanced Management Program (AMP 180)

Harvard Business School, United StatesExecutive programme

Breakthrough Executive Program

Egon Zehnder — Mobius, PortugalExecutive programme

AML/CFT Introduction Course

DTOS, Mauritius — April 2023Regulatory training

Qualifications as disclosed in IBL Ltd's published director profile for Arnaud Lagesse.

03 — The chapters

Four movements in one career

I

Before 1993 · Paris

Beginning in finance, at a distance from home

Arnaud Lagesse began his working life in finance in Paris. It is a detail worth pausing on, because it establishes a pattern that recurs later: he entered the family business having first been trained and tested outside it.

A period in a European financial centre in the late 1980s and early 1990s was an education in a particular discipline — the valuation of businesses, the structuring of transactions, the reading of a balance sheet as a strategic document rather than a compliance one. IBL's own disclosure of his core competencies still names deal structuring first among his specialisms.

For a Mauritian group whose next three decades would be defined by acquisition, amalgamation and cross-border investment, that grounding proved consequential.

Arnaud Lagesse working at his desk in a tan jacket, holding his reading glasses

II

1993 – 2005 · Mauritius

Studio portrait of Arnaud Lagesse in a navy jacket and striped shirt

Twelve years inside the family enterprise

In 1993 he joined the Mauritian family company. Its origin lies in 1939, when his grandfather, Joseph Lagesse, acquired the Mon Loisir sugar estate — a starting point that placed the family firmly in the agricultural economy that then defined the island.

Twelve years passed between joining and becoming chief executive. That interval is itself part of the story. Succession in family enterprises is often the point at which they fail; a long apprenticeship inside the business, in a group that had by then diversified well beyond cane, is a materially different preparation from inheriting a title.

By the time he took the chief executive's role in 2005, the group — then known as GML — had become one of the principal investment holding structures in Mauritius, with interests spanning agriculture, commerce, financial services and hospitality.

III

2005 – 2016 · Consolidation

From holding company to listed conglomerate

The decade that followed was one of steady portfolio construction — and it ended in the transaction that defines his public record. In 2016 he initiated the amalgamation of GML Investissement Ltée with Ireland Blyth Limited, a trading and services company whose own lineage runs back through the 1972 merger of Blyth Brothers and Ireland Fraser to commercial activity beginning in 1830.

The combined entity was renamed IBL Ltd and listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius on 14 July 2016. It became, on the group's own account, the largest group in Mauritius and the second largest in the region excluding South Africa.

Mergers of this size are rare in small economies, and rarer still between two houses with distinct cultures and overlapping interests. The integration questions — which businesses to keep, which to combine, which to release — occupied the years that followed.

Arnaud Lagesse listening in conversation, hand resting against his chin

IV

2016 – present · Beyond borders

Arnaud Lagesse, Group CEO of IBL Together, in a formal seated portrait

Leading a regional operator and investor

A permanent office in Nairobi opened in January 2018. In 2021 the group set out its Beyond Borders strategy: a deliberate reorientation toward growth outside Mauritius, pursued largely through partnership with established local operators rather than greenfield entry. A five-year commitment of USD 125 million to African investment followed in 2022.

The most visible expression of that approach is the group's position in Naivas, the Kenyan supermarket chain, entered in 2022 alongside partners and increased in 2023. Retail has since become the group's largest cluster by revenue.

In October 2025 the group reorganised into four strategic clusters — Retail; Consumer Brands & Distribution; Industrials; and Services — grouping businesses by growth profile and operating model rather than by historical sector lines. In February 2026, ten years after the merger, it refreshed its identity as IBL Together around the values Truth, Trust and Together.

04 — Responsibilities

Chairmanships and directorships

As disclosed in IBL Ltd's published director profile. Appointments change over time; this list reflects the group's own public record.

Chairman

Phoenix Beverages Limited
Phoenix Investment Company Limited
The Lux Collective Limited
City Brokers Ltd
Camp Investment Limited
Bloomage Ltd
Miwa Sugar Ltd
Fondation Joseph Lagesse

Director

IBL Ltd — Executive Director and Group CEO
Alteo Limited
Seafood Hub Limited
Pick and Buy Limited
Other non-listed Mauritian companies

Public role

President, Business Mauritius — elected 30 September 2025

Sources: IBL Ltd director profile; Business Mauritius announcement of 30 September 2025. Business Mauritius was formed in 2015 through the merger of the Mauritius Employers' Federation and the Joint Economic Council.

05 — On the record

Positions he has stated publicly

“The biggest challenge Mauritius faces today is the attraction, development and retention of human capital.”

Arnaud LagesseQuoted in The Business Report

“We're a family-founded group built on shared values, accountability and trust.”

Arnaud LagesseIBL corporate communication, February 2026

“Mauritius is going through a transformational phase. Our diversified economy is learning to adapt itself to numerous changes in consumer expectations and habits.”

Arnaud LagesseQuoted in The Business Report

“Real success is defined by the impact we have on people's lives and the value we create.”

Arnaud LagesseIBL corporate communication, February 2026

Only quotations that appear in published interviews or official corporate communications are reproduced on this website. No statement has been paraphrased into quotation marks, and no opinion has been attributed to Arnaud Lagesse that he has not expressed publicly.