French fashion mogul Bernard Arnault has become the richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of $ 186.3 billion.
Which makes him $ 300 million richer than Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, which has a fortune of $ 186 billion, and Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, who has a fortune of $ 147.3 billion. According to the Forbes website.
Arnault’s fortune has grown from $ 76 billion in March 2020 to $ 186.3 billion, a massive increase of over $ 110 billion in the past 14 months, thanks to the performance of his luxury group Louis Vuitton Moi-Hensi (LVM). H).
The value of the group, which also owns well-known brands like Fendi and Christian Dior Givenchy, rose 0.4% during the first hours of trading on Monday, bringing its market value to $ 320 billion.
Arnault’s personal stake increased by more than $ 600 million.
Who is Bernard Arnault?
Bernard Jean-Etienne Arnault was born on March 5, 1949 in Roubaix, France.

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Her father is the industrialist Jean-Léon Arnaud and her mother is Marie-Joseph Savinel, daughter of Etienne Savinel, who entrusted her husband with the management of his civil engineering company Ferret Savinel, and her mother was very fond of Dior.
Arnault joined his father’s business after graduating from college and began making plans to develop and grow the business in 1976 and took to the business world.
In 2017, Arnault fully acquired the Christian Dior brand through its luxury company LVMH in a $ 13 billion transaction.
He brings together a 70-year-old brand that has seduced movie stars like Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman, with the perfume and cosmetics company Christian Dior, which already had its own collection.
Arnault has been married twice, and has a son and a daughter by his first wife, Anne Dewafrin, and his second wife, Helen Mercier, who is a pianist, and they have 3 children.

Luxury subsidiaries in Europe
Arnault and his group represent the remarkable rise of luxury fashion houses in Europe during the lockdown.
Jeffreys analyst Flavio Creeda says the surge was behind the “buoyancy” of buyers in China, where LVMH reported sales of $ 17 billion for the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 32% compared to the same period in 2020.
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From March 18, 2020 to last Monday, the net worth of rival François Pinault, whose Kering Group owns luxury brands Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McCain and Gucci, rose from $ 27 billion to $ 55.1 billion.

Europe n ° 1
Over the years, Americans have largely dominated the top of Forbes’ billionaire list.
U.S. citizens Bezos, Musk, Gates and Buffett have held the top spot most of the time for two decades, with the exception of a short span in which Mexican Carlos Slim dominated the top spot.
Theo and Karl Albrecht, the founders of the Aldi supermarket chain, were the wealthiest Europeans for several years at the turn of the century; they reached the top 10 but did not get the first place. Arnault entered the top 10 in mid-2005 with a fortune of $ 13 billion.
Arnault has been in the top five since 2018, becoming the third richest person in 2019 with an estimated wealth of $ 76 billion that even surpassed Bezos to briefly become the richest person in the world on December 16, 2019, when he passed Bezos.
Amazon finally ended up pushing the French billionaire to second place.
The net worth of the richest in the world has fluctuated dramatically since the start of the epidemic, as Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, briefly became the richest person in the world in January 2021, when his net worth reached 189. , $ 7 billion.
This represents a staggering increase of $ 165 billion since March 2020, when it was worth $ 24.6 billion.

Source : BBC