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In 1924, Chanel agreed with the Wertheimer brothers Pierre and Paul, directors of the perfume house Bourgeois, creating a new corporate entity, Parfums Chanel. The Wertheimers agreed to manage the production, marketing, and distribution of Chanel No. 5. The Wertheimers would receive a 70 percent share of the company, and Rheophile Bader, founder of the Paris department store Galeries Lafayette, would receive 20 percent. Bader had been instrumental in brokering the business connection by introducing Chanel to Pierre Wertheimer at the Longchamps races in 1922.^[7] For 10 percent of the stock, Chanel licensed her name to Parfums Chanel. She removed herself from involvement in all business operations.^[2]: 95 Later, unhappy with the arrangement, Chanel worked for more than twenty years to gain full control of Parfums Chanel. She said that Pierre Wertheimer was "the bandit who screwed me."^[2]: 153

World War II brought with it the Nazi seizure of all Jewish-owned property and businesses, providing Chanel with the opportunity to gain control of Parfums Chanel and its most profitable product, Chanel No. 5. The Wertheimers were Jewish, and Chanel used her position as an "Aryan" to petition German officials to legalize her right to sole ownership.

On 5 May 1941, Chanel wrote to the government administrator charged with ruling on the disposition of Jewish financial assets. Her grounds for proprietary ownership were based on the claim that Parfums Chanel "is still the property of Jews" and had been legally "abandoned" by the owners.

I have an indisputable right of priority … the profits that I have received from my creations since the foundation of this business … are disproportionate … [and] you can help to repair in part the prejudices I have suffered in the course of these seventeen years.

Chanel was not aware that the Wertheimers, anticipating the forthcoming Nazi confiscations, had, in May 1940, legally turned control of Parfums Chanel over to a Christian, French businessman and industrialist Felix Amit. At the end of World War II, Amit returned Parfums Chanel to the Wertheimers.