A European billionaire was the richest man in the world for a few hours. It is about Bernard Arnault. As reported by «Forbes», Thanks to the performance of the stock market, which opens earlier in France due to the time zone the CEO and shareholder of the French luxury group Lvmh surpassed the first in the Forbes billionaire rankings, Jeff Bezos, whose assets were still “at a standstill” due to the closure of Wall Street. But when the American markets also opened, the founder and shareholder of Amazon took his place back with the rise in technology stocks. It is as if in a Formula 1 race Amazon had been stopped in the pits, but then overtook the French car against it. The fact is that, with an estimated assets of 186.3 billion dollars, for the space of a morning, on May 24 the owner of the luxury group exceeded the wealth of the number one of the retail sales giant by 300 million.
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The momentum of sales in China and the rally of the title
Arnault’s fortune, notes the US magazine, went from 76 billion dollars in March 2020 to 186.3 billion dollars: +110 billion dollars in the last 14 months, thanks in particular to the performance recorded in bag by the Lvmh group (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy): the shares of the group rose 77 percent in one year. Forbes cites the “momentum” of the sales in China where, according to Jefferies analyst Flavio Cereda, LVMH recorded revenues of $ 17 billion for the first quarter of 2021, up 32% compared to the same period of 2020.
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Arnault’s climb from 2005 to today
Bernard Arnault joined the top ten Richest men in the world in 2005, with a fortune of $ 13 billion, was in the top five since 2018 and became the third richest person in 2019, with a fortune of $ 76 billion. Even the December 16, 2019 for a few moments he had already overtaken Bezos to become the richest man in the world, but then even on that occasion Amazon shares had closed higher, bringing the French tycoon back to second place.
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The ranking dominated by the USA
Over the years, the top spot on Forbes’ list of billionaires has been largely dominated by Americans: The first place was occupied by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk (who was born in South Africa but also has a US passport), Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for most of the two decades, with only Carlos Slim of Mexico to disturb their rule for a certain period of time.
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