By Bernard Arnault, a good example of one who takes advantage of all his opportunities
When mentioning billionaires, Bernard Arnault will definitely not miss the list. With a net worth of over $133 billion, the 71 year old French business man is an icon like no other. His wealth is mostly brought by his giant fashion company; Louis Vuitton. His mastery of wealth generation and his resilience has massively contributed to him being such a unique and wealthy business man. Bernard is known to be the richest man in the world dealing with fashion and clothing industry.
Although it may seem simple and easy, Bernard has had to put in a lot of hard work and persistence for many years for him to get to the level of being the second richest man alive in the world today. The fashion industry is a tough one; it has very dynamic and ever changing customer behavior and desires. For you to survive, you have to be ready to do all it takes to satisfy customers and be unique in the industry, Bernard undoubtedly went beyond all this limits and found profit from it.
Today, we take you through the journey of Bernard Arnault from where he started to him bring the business guru and giant he is right now.
Early Life
Bring son to Jean Arnault and Marie Savinel, Bernard Arnault was born on 5th march 1949 in France. His father was a manufacturer who ran a family manufacturing company that he inherited from the family.
Bernard grew up and spent most of his childhood life in Roubaix, France. He went ahead to tertiary institution and later graduated from one of the best engineering schools in France and shortly after, he started working at his father’s company.
Career
Bernard started out his career by working at their family’s company, he gained the needed experience and he rose through the ranks and after some few years he was the president of the company Ferret Savinel. He maintained the same position until 1984 when he started to expand his business territories such as the ones below.
Christian Dior
Financiere Agache was the first luxury goods company that Bernard acquired. He put all his efforts in improving the quality of goods and gave the company a new look. As the head of the company, he as well bought another three textile companies including Christian Dior (a famous brand) and Le Bon Marche (a departmental store), he later sold all the others remaining only with the two.
LVHM
This is a company that is responsible bringing Bernard most of his wealth. With a sum of $1.5 billion, he was able to buy shares from the company making him control 24 percent of the LVMH’s shares. He again spent an amount of not less than $600 million to get an additional 13 percent of the company’s shares and later used another $ 500 million to gain a total of 43 percent shares making him the largest shareholder in the company. By being the largest shareholder, he as well acquired 35 percent of the company’s voting rights that enabled him to successfully stop the process of dismantling the company. He was later elected to be the head of the executive management board in the company which tasked him with many important decision making role of the company. Bernard has since been in that position since he gained it in 1989 up to date.
With ambition and determination, Bernard has led the company making it one of the most renowned fashion empires in the world. This success was however achieved mainly by decentralizing the company’s brands; each brand was given a mandate and independently stood by itself with only little support from the mother company.
Bernard did not stop at that, he continued buying and taking huge shares in companies that were relevant to him.
- The company was acquired in 1988.
- Berluti and Kenzo. It was bought in the year 1993 under LVMH.
- La Tribune. A newspaper company purchased in 1993 and sold in 2007
- A perfume company acquired in 1994.
- Bought in 1996.
All the above are just few of the firms that Bernard purchased during his entrepreneurship journey.
Bernard Arnault remains an iconic example of a businessman who took roots in making a huge web of businesses and heavily gained from it. With his net worth currently being more than $133 billion, Bernard stands to be the second richest man in the world. However, he went ahead of Jeff Bezos becoming the world’s richest person in late 2019 until early 2020 but went back to his second position in the Forbes list.
