Who is Bernard Arnault, the world's richest person?

New Delhi: French billionaire and CEO of Louis vuitton, Bernard Arnault, has pipped Tesla's Elon Musk to become the richest person in the world.
On the Forbes real time billionaires list, Bernard Arnault is placed at the 1st position with a wealth of $188.6 billion, while Musk has slipped to second with a total net worth of $178.6 billion.
The two billionaires have been swapping positions for the top spot for the last one week.
Who is Bernard Arnault?
Bernard Arnault is Chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, the world’s leading luxury products group.
The 73-year-old has long been a mainstay in wealth rankings, but, unlike Musk and other brash billionaires, makes only rare public appearances and isn’t personally active on social media. Though LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE oozes extravagance, with 75 labels ranging from Dom Perignon to Christian Dior to Tiffany & Co., he’s sought a low profile in a country where bling-bling displays of wealth are frowned upon.
Born in Roubaix in the north of France in 1949, Arnault graduated from the elite engineering school Polytechnique. He went on to work at the family business, Ferret Savinel, which focused on industrial construction, before moving in 1981 to the US, where he ventured into property development.
He returned to France and made his foray into luxury goods in 1984, when he took over Boussac Saint-Freres, the bankrupt textile group that owned a gem: Christian Dior. He spun off most of the company’s other businesses and used the windfall to buy a controlling stake in LVMH, whose two main companies, Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessy, had merged in 1987.
In 1989, Arnault became the majority shareholder of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, creating the world’s leading luxury products group. Arnault has been Chairman and CEO of the company since that date.
Bernard Arnault oversees the LVMH empire of some 70 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora.
Over the next three decades, he turned LVMH into a luxury behemoth selling Champagne, wine, spirits, fashion, leather goods, watches, jewelry, hotel stays, perfume and cosmetics through more than 5,500 stores worldwide. He was quick to grasp that China would become a key market, opening the first Louis Vuitton store in Beijing in 1992.
According to Forbes, in January 2021, LVMH acquired American jeweler Tiffany & Co for $15.8 billion, believed to be the biggest luxury brand acquisition ever.
LVMH spent $3.2 billion in 2019 for luxury hospitality group Belmond, which owns or manages 46 hotels, trains and river cruises.
Four of Arnault's five children work in corners of the LVMH empire: Frédéric, Delphine, Antoine and Alexandre.
In addition to his role at LVMH, Arnault is also the majority shareholder of the luxury goods company Christian Dior SE.
Through the years, Arnault turned LVMH into a luxury behemoth selling Champagne, wine, spirits, fashion, leather goods, watches, jewellery, hotel stays, perfume, and cosmetics through more than 5,500 stores worldwide.
According to Bloomberg’s wealth index estimates, the vast majority of Arnault’s fortune stems from his 97.5% stake in Christian Dior, which, in turn, controls about 41% of LVMH. The family holds an additional LVMH stake of roughly 6%.
Arnault has an estimated $10.3 billion in cash and other assets, based on an analysis that includes dividends, taxes and charitable contributions.
While weakening markets have also taken a bite out of Arnault’s wealth this year — his fortune is down about $7.2 billion in 2022 — he’s fared better than the tech billionaires who dominate the world’s rich list. That’s because demand has remained resilient for high-end products as the Covid-19 crisis has ebbed.
LVMH, with a €365.7 billion market value that’s the biggest in Europe, earlier this year lifted the age limit of its chief executive officer. That would allow Arnault to stay at the helm until 80, a sign he intends to be in charge for longer.
In his quest to stay under the radar, Arnault said in October that LVMH sold its private jet.
Twitter accounts follow the planes of billionaires in an attempt to shame them about carbon emissions, and the subject became a hot topic in France, with some politicians proposing to ban or tax private jets.
“With all these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it,” Arnault said on Radio Classique, which is owned by LVMH. “The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes.”
Arnault, who’s known to keep a strict diet and play tennis regularly, is also an art collector and led the opening in 2014 of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne. The venue is a monumental private art museum designed by Frank Gehry, meant to house LVMH’s corporate collection as well as Arnault’s.
With inputs from Bloomberg