Ammon – French billionaire Bernard Arnault managed to snatch the title of richest man in the world by the end of 2022, after American Elon Musk lost more than half of his fortune.
Since topping the rankings of the richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Index for the Wealthy, Bernard Arnault has continued to widen the gap with Musk, who suffered a record loss in 2022 estimated at around $200 billion. richest man in the world and how did all this wealth put him on the throne of the rich?
The 73-year-old Arnault is the CEO of luxury goods group Louis Vuitton and his fortune is estimated at $175 billion, according to Forbes.
Arnault was mostly and semi-permanently near the top of the world’s richest people rankings for years, until he managed to surpass Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021.
Biography of Bernard Arnault
Arnault is the son of French construction tycoons and took over his father’s company in the 1970s, before the French billionaire moved into the retail and textile industries.
In 1985, Arnault began building what is now the LVMH Group by raising $15 million from his family business to buy Christian Dior from its bankrupt owners.
Bernard Arnault still holds a 97.5% stake in the famous French fashion house.
Over the next three decades, Arnault expanded his luxury goods empire by helping merge Louis Vuitton with Moët Hennessy and acquiring a controlling stake in the resulting holding company, LVMH.
Currently, the French billionaire controls about half of LVMH, which has a market capitalization of around $390 billion, generating $60 billion in revenue in the first 9 months of 2022.
So far, Arnault has pledged to frequently monitor the performance of brands affiliated with LVMH and its competitors, amid reports that he visits 25 websites a day. The French businessman does not hide his pride in preserving the most famous brands and designers in France.
Mask loss
The rise of French billionaire Bernard Arnault to the top of the world’s rich came after the rapid and record loss of American billionaire Elon Musk, which followed his sale of many Tesla shares and the acquisition of the famous ‘Twitter’ platform at the end of last October.
Amid the turmoil in global markets, Arnault’s wealth has remained broadly stable in recent months as the vast majority of his wealth is tied to his stake in LVMH, and since 2020 the company’s share price has grown by around 65%. .
On the other hand, the French businessman’s wealth grew by tens of billions of dollars over the same period. According to Forbes estimates, Arnault’s fortune more than doubled to $150 billion last year, up from $75 billion in 2020 due to increased demand for luxury goods after a dip in the coronavirus pandemic .
Arno’s story with Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs
Arnault has said that “Sage of Omaha” is his greatest inspiration, as he has stated in previous statements that Buffett is the person he most admires in business, emphasizing that he has great ideas and he sticks to them.
The Berkshire Hathaway founder is known for his buy-and-hold policy as he closely monitors the markets on a daily basis, and Arnault similarly described patience as an essential quality in the business world.
But it seems he hasn’t fully followed in Buffett’s footsteps, as the latter has donated $45 billion of his wealth to charity since 2006, and also pledged to donate about half of his wealth before his death.
Arnault hasn’t made those promises, at least publicly, and his most famous charity was in 2019 when his family donated $226 million to help restore the famed Notre-Dame de Paris, which has been the subject of a devastating fire in the same year.
And Buffett is not the only American businessman influenced by Arno, as the head of LVMH expressed his appreciation for Steve Jobs, the late founder of “Apple”, and it seems that this appreciation was mutual between the two parties, as Arno had previously stated that Jobs contacted him for advice on opening an Apple Retail store.
(Eye)
