Photo Credit: instagram.com/badgalriri
The boss of all bosses—Chairman and CEO of luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault—has officially entered the $100 billion net worth club, joining the ranks of fellow multi-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates of Amazon and Microsoft fame. According to Bloomberg, Arnault crossed the $100 billion mark this year, increasing his net worth by almost $32 billion.
The report continued to note that this hike by the French luxury goods tycoon was in part, due to the increasing demand from Chinese consumers for products under the LVMH umbrella, including Louis Vuitton handbags, which helped raise its share price 43% this year. It also stated that this was the largest on the 500-member Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Other names that made it to the top 10 spots on this list include Warren Buffett; Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; co-founder of Inditex, known for its Zara fast fashion chain, Amancio Ortega; head of the largest mobile phone operator in Latin America called America Movil, Carlos Slim; co-founder of software firm Oracle, Larry Ellison; granddaughter of L’Oreal founder, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and Larry Page, co-founder of Google.
Photo Credit: Louis Vuitton
Though Arnault is the continent of Europe’s first centibillionaire (and Europe’s richest person), other French multibillionaires also made significant placements on the list, such as Kering Group‘s François Pinault at number 23—another luxury French conglomerate under which are the brands Gucci, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Brioni, Alexander McQueen, Ulysse Nardin and Bottega Veneta; Alain and Gerard Wertheimer at numbers 31 and 32—the brothers behind CHANEL; and Françoise Bettencourt Meyers at number 9—the richest woman in the world and heiress to the L’Oreal fortune.
Photo Credit: Daniele Venturelli/Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images for Gucci
