Frenchman Bernard Arnault, on the verge of becoming the richest man in the world
The fortune of the owner of the group of luxury brands LVMH could surpass that of the American Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.
The tycoon who displaced Amancio Ortega as the richest in fashion
French businessman Bernard Arnault, owner of the luxury brand group LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), could soon snatch the title of richest man in the world from the American Jeff Bezos, the founder of the Amazon online store, according to reports of the index of billionaires prepared by the magazine 'Forbes'.
Arnault, 70, is synonymous with luxury in France. Most of his fortune comes from the fact that he controls 97.4 percent of the Christian Dior couture house, which in turn owns 41 percent of the LVMH group.
He is considered the richest man in France and recently is the second richest man in the world. He is the owner of prestigious brands such as Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Kenzo, Moët & Chandon, TAG Heuer, Dom Perignon and the Spanish Loewe.
He has just bought the American jewelery company Tiffany for 14.7 billion euros. Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), elegantly dressed in black and wearing sunglasses after a night out, would stop in front of this Fifth Avenue jewelry store to admire the jewels in the window while having a croissant and coffee for breakfast. opening of the movie 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'.
The French businessman and his family have a fortune of 107,800 million dollars, according to the list of billionaires of the magazine 'Forbes', which calculates the fortune of the richest in real time. Ahead of him is only Jeff Bezos, with a fortune of 113,000 million dollars.
#RaisingTheBar IS BACK! 📅 JUNE 27TH! 🕛 ALL DAY! 💵 @CrisisTextLine! 🎁 CHARITY, FUN, GAMES, PRIZES. 🎁 FOLLOW FOR U… https://t.co/F4EatFJvLK
— Michaelmcchill Sun Jun 20 04:35:10 +0000 2021
Arnault managed last March to snatch the third place from the American Warren Buffet on the world list of billionaires. In June, he became one of the few men whose fortune has exceeded 100,000 million euros. He has now managed to take the second position in the world list of billionaires from Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, with a fortune of 107,300 million dollars.
So far this year, the value of Arnault's fortune has risen 51.3%, which would be equivalent to 35.2 billion dollars, according to the Bloomberg agency's billionaires index.
Arnault, who studied at the Polytechnic School in Paris, began working in 1971 at the Ferret-Savinel family business. He entered the luxury brand market in 1984, when he bought Financiere Agache, the group to which Christian Dior belonged. In 1989 he managed to take control of LVMH, one of the great groups in the luxury sector, the result of the merger of the Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy groups.
The French businessman has an important art collection that includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso. And he is behind the Louis Vuitton Foundation, a magnificent museum built on the outskirts of Paris by architect Frank Gehry.
Arnault lives in Paris with his wife, Canadian concert pianist Helene Mercier, whom he remarried in 1991. They have three children together: Alexandre, Fréderic and Jean. The French businessman had two other children, Delphine and Antoine, the result of his marriage to Anne Dewavrin.
The owner of LVMH offered this year 200 million euros for the reconstruction of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral, partially destroyed in a fire last April. His eternal rival in the world of luxury, the French billionaire François Pinault, offered 100 million euros.
According to the criteria of
Know more
