Who is Bernard Arnault, the man who replaced Elon Musk as world’s richest? Read this article to know more about him!
World’s Richest Man?
Who Is Bernard Arnault ?
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault (born 5 March 1949) is a wealthy French business investor, and art collector. He is the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, the world’s largest luxury goods company.
He is aged 73, married with 5 kids and resides in his home country France
His mother, Marie-Josèphe Savinel had a “fascination for Dior”.His father, manufacturer Jean Léon Arnault, a graduate of École Centrale Paris, owned the civil engineering company Ferret-Savinel.[7]
Bernard Arnault was educated at the Lycée Maxence Van Der Meersch in Roubaix, and the Lycée Faidherbe in Lille.In 1971, he then graduated from École Polytechnique, France’s leading engineering school, and began work for his father’s company.
Following the acquisition of a textile company and relocation of their headquarters, the company renamed the real estate branch to the George V Group. The real estate assets were later sold to Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE), eventually becoming Nexity.
Bernard Arnault oversees the LVMH empire of some 70 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora.In January 2021 his company LVMH acquired American jeweler Tiffany & Co for $15.8 billion the biggest luxury brand acquisition ever.
Some of his other investments include;
In 1998, with businessman Albert Frère he purchased Château Cheval Blanc in a personal capacity. LVMH acquired Arnault’s share in 2009 to add to the group’s other wine property Château d’Yquem.
From 1998 to 2001, Arnault invested in a variety of web companies such as Boo.com, Libertysurf, and Zebank through his holding Europatweb. Groupe Arnault also invested in Netflix in 1999.
In 2007, Blue Capital announced that Arnault owns jointly with the California property firm Colony Capital 10.69% of France’s largest supermarket retailer and the world’s second-largest food distributor Carrefour.
In 2008, he entered the yacht business and bought Princess Yachts for 253 million euros. He subsequently took control of Royal van Lent for an almost identical.
Is Bernard Arnault the world’s richest man?
Bernard Arnault, the chairman of French luxury goods giant LVMH , has just become the first European to top Bloomberg’s list of the world’s richest people,moving Elon Musk to second place.
Now worth $171 billion, Arnault’s wealth eclipsed the Tesla CEO’s $164 billion fortune on Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Arnault had already topped Elon Musk from the top spot on Forbes’ list last week.
Musk’s net worth has tumbled by $107 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Arnault’s wealth, which stems from his controlling stake in LVMH, has suffered a more modest $7 billion decline.
The drop is partly down to the stock performance of the companies in which the pair own shares. Musk’s purchase of Twitter hasn’t helped either.
Musk is not the only tech entrepreneur to have have suffered a hit to his wealth recently. To assume first position he had to overtake Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos,who has now slipped to fifth on the list.
Rising interest rates have hammered tech companies, and Amazon’s value has shrunk in face of an incoming recession and and expected lull in consumer spending.
Amazon value dropped below $1trillion for the first time since April 2020 in November. The record rate at which the Fed has raised interest rates this year sent its stocks spiraling.
Musk’s worth in recent years has largely been pinned to the value of Tesla, which skyrocketed during the pandemic as the company became profitable, but has suffered this year in part due to concerns over production.. Still, he is in no imminent danger of falling further down the list: His fortune remains comfortably bigger than that of Indian industrialist Gautam Adani ($125 billion) and Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos ($116 billion), who rank third and fourth on Bloomberg’s list.
The 73-year-old Bernard Arnault has long been a mainstay in wealth rankings.
