Bernard Arnault

At 75 years old, Bernard Arnault has this physical status:

Career

Arnault began his career in 1971, at Ferret-Savinel, and served as its president from 1978 to 1984. Arnault, then a young real estate developer, learned that the French government was about to choose someone to head the Boussac Saint-Frères empire, a textile and retail conglomerate that belonged to Christian Dior.

Arnault purchased the Financière Agache, a luxury goods company, with the assistance of Antoine Bernheim, a senior partner of Lazard Frères. He became the CEO of Financière Agache and later won the bidding war for Boussac Saint-Frères, acquiring the company for a sole franc and effectively taking over Boussac Saint-Frères. The department store Le Bon Marché, the retail store Conforama, and diaper maker Peaudouce were among Christian Dior's assets, as well as Christian Dior, Boussac's.

After Arnault bought Boussac, he laid off 9,000 workers in two years, after which he adopted the nickname "The Terminator." He then sold virtually all of the company's assets, leaving only the Christian Dior brand and Le Bon Marché department stores. By 1987, the company was profitable again, with revenue streams of $1.9 billion dollars.

Arnault had the desire to create a group of luxury brands in the 1980s. In 1987, he worked with Alain Chevalier, CEO of Mot Hennessy, and Henry Racamier, president of Louis Vuitton, to establish LVMH.

Arnault founded Guinness, which held 24% of LVMH's shares, in July 1988. Arnault spent $600 million to purchase 13.5% of LVMH, making him the company's largest shareholder. LVMH was founded on the assumption that the conglomerate would be too large for a single hostile raider. The premise, on the other hand, was unable to account attempts to take over internal operations. When Arnault's president Henry Racamier had a conflicting strategic vision from Louis Vuitton's president, the break became too large to ignore.

He invested another $500 million in January 1989 to gain control of a whopping 55% of LVMH's shares and 35% of the company's voting rights, effectively ending the "blocking group" that was required to prevent the LVMH from destroying the LVMH company's dismantlement of the LVMH company. Racamier was robbed of his office and sacked from the board of directors, and he retaliated against him. He was unanimously elected chairman of the executive management board on January 13, 1989.

Arnault's leadership over the company's ambitious growth strategy, transforming it into one of the world's biggest luxury companies, as well as French-based Kering. Annual revenues and profits increased by a factor of 5 in 11 years, and the LVMH's market value increased by a factor of 15. Arnault acquired Céline in 1987. He sponsored French fashion designer Christian Lacroix in order to highlight the company's luxurious clothing collection in the same year. In 1993, LVMH acquired Berluti and Kenzo, the same year Arnault purchased out La Tribune, France's state-owned newspaper. Despite his 150 million euro investment, the company didn't succeed, and he sold it in November 2007 in order to buy Les Échos, a French economic newspaper. LVMH acquired Guerlain in 1994. Arnault bought Loewe out of existence in 1996, Marc Jacobs and Sephora followed him in 1997. In addition, five other brands were integrated into the group: Thomas Pink in 1999, Emilio Pucci in 2000, and Fendi, DKNY, and La Samaritaine in 2001. Arnault decided to establish a New York center to coordinate LVMH's presence in the United States in the 1990s. Christian de Portzamparc was chosen to head this project. The result, the LVMH Tower, which opened in December 1999, was the result. Arnault and Domenico De Sole owned Gucci, an Italian leather goods firm that was run by Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole in the same year. He had a 5 percent interest in the company before being discovered. Gucci retaliated vehemently, referring to it as a "creeping takeover." Arnault raised his stake to 34.4 percent after being discovered while claiming to be a sympathetic and unsecure stakeholder. Arnault's stake in Gucci will decrease as a result of board representation, as De Sole suggested in exchange for board representation. Arnault, on the other hand, refused to use these terms. De Sole discovered a loophole that allowed him to issue shares with only board approval, and he created more for his staff, diluting Arnault's interest. The war raged on until it was resolved in September 2001. Following the court's order, LVMH sold its shares and walked away with $700 million in net loss.

Arnault reported the acquisition of 54.4 percent of the Italian jeweler Bulgari's family-owned shares on March 7, 2011, with the intention of making a tender offer for the remainder, which was publicly owned. The deal was worth $5.2 billion. Arnault invested $641 million in LcapitalAsia in 2011. National Business Daily announced on March 7th that mid-priced clothing brand QDA would debut stores with the support of Arnault's private equity company LCapitalAsia and Chinese apparel company Xin Hee Co. Ltd. in Beijing. Arnault joined Marco De Vincenzo, an Italian fashion company, in February 2014, taking a majority stake in the company. In 2016, LVMH sold DKNY to the G-III Apparel Group. Arnault reported the acquisition of Christian Dior haute couture, leather, both men and women's ready-to-wear, as well as footwear, which combined the entire Christian Dior brand within LVMH in April 2017.

Arnault led the company to record sales of €42.6 billion in 2017, 13% over the previous year, as all divisions delivered solid results. The net profit increased by 29 percent in the same year. Arnault planned to purchase Tiffany & Co. for approximately US $16.2 billion in November 2019. By June 2020, the agreement was expected to come to an end. LVMH's statement in September 2020 cautioned that the takeover would not take place and that the agreement was "invalid" as a result of Tiffany's treatment of the company during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tiffany filed a lawsuit against LVMH, asking the court to order the purchase or to assess damages against the defendant; LVMH planned to countersuit, alleging that mismanagement had invalidated the purchase agreement. Despite a financial loss of US$32 million during the pandemic, a reliable source told Forbes (magazine) that Arnault's decision to cancel the Tiffany acquisition was solely financial: Tiffany was paying millions in dividends to shareholders. Following an audit of financial reports, Arnault discovered that some US$70 million had already been paid out by Tiffany, with another US$70 million set to be paid in November 2020. LVMH filed a countersuit against Tiffany's court action; LMVH's statement blamed Tiffany's mismanagement during the pandemic and said that it was "burning money and reporting losses." Tiffany and LVMH consented to the original takeover bid in late October 2020, but at a slightly reduced price of nearly $16 billion, a small decrease of 2.6 percent from the previous one. The latest offer reduced the amount paid per share by LVMH from $135 to $131.50. In January 2021, LVMH completed the acquisition of Tiffany.

LVMH has risen to become the country's largest company by market capitalization under Arnault's leadership, with a record of 313 billion euros ($382 billion) as of May 2021. Arnault has embraced decentralization of the company's brands as a corporate strategy. As a result of these steps, Tiffany and other LVMH brands are still considered independent businesses with their own history. Arnault became the world's richest man for a short period of time in 2021, beating Jeff Bezos with a net worth of 187.3 billion dollars. Amazon stock soared a few hours later, but Jeff Bezos regained the position a few hours later.

Arnault served on the Board of Advisors of the Malaysian 1MDB fund from 2010 to 2013.

Château Cheval Blanc was purchased by businessman Albert Frère in 1998 in a personal capacity. In 2009, LVMH acquired Arnault's stake to add to the company's other wine property, Château d'Yquem.

Arnault invested in several web businesses from 1998 to 2001, including Boo.com, Libertysurf, and Zebank, as well as his investment in Europatweb. In 1999, Groupe Arnault invested in Netflix.

Arnault and California's second-largest food distributor Carrefour announced in 2007 that Arnault owns jointly with Colony Capital 10.69% of France's largest supermarket chain and the world's second-largest food distributor Carrefour.

He entered the yacht industry in 2008 and bought Princess Yachts for 253 million euros. He later bought Royal van Lent for a substantially similar sum.

Source

Awards

• Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur (10 February 2007)
• Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (14 July 2011)
• The Woodrow Wilson Award for Global Corporate Citizenship (2011)
• Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (2012)
• The Museum of Modern Art's David Rockefeller Award (March 2014)