- Bernard Arnault, chairman, and chief executive officer of the luxury goods brand LVMH, outshone Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the second richest person in the world.
- The French businessman added an estimated $2.8 billion to his fortune within two days of announcing the acquisition by LVMH of the iconic jewelry brand Tiffany and Co, according to Forbes ‘ Real-Time Billionaires List. His net worth boomed by 2.7 percent to a total of $107.6 billion, putting just Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos behind Bernard Arnault.
Bernard Arnault, chairman, and chief executive officer of the luxury goods brand LVMH, outshone Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the second richest person in the world.
The French businessman added an estimated $2.8 billion to his fortune within two days of announcing the acquisition by LVMH of the iconic jewelry brand Tiffany and Co, according to Forbes ‘ Real-Time Billionaires List. His net worth boomed by 2.7 percent to a total of $107.6 billion, putting just Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos behind Bernard Arnault.
According to the Forbes list, Jeff Bezos, who had just beat Bill Gates as the richest person in the world, has a net worth of $110.5 billion. In the meantime, the fortunes of Bill Gates are rising to $107 billion.
While Bernard Arnault has surpassed Bill Gates on the Forbes list, he is still behind Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates on the Billionaires Index of Bloomberg, which estimates his total fortune at $103 billion, compared to the $110 billion Microsoft co-founder. This year, according to Bloomberg’s ranking, Bernard Arnault has added more than $34 billion to his assets.
Bernard Arnault crossed the $100 billion mark earlier in June 2019 and entered the most elite club in the world to become a centi-billionaire. At the time, only three people in the world were part of this elite club, including Jeff Bezos from Amazon and Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft’s technology giant.
Tiffany acquisition
Luxury brand LVMH, where Bernard Arnault is the majority stakeholder, on Monday snapped over $16 billion in US jewelry brand Tiffany and Co. It is now expected that Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton will expand Tiffany’s presence around the globe and especially in the budding Asain market, Bloomberg said. LVMH has several in-house jewelry brands, including Bulgari, TAG Heuer, etc. Shares of LVMH saw a spike on Monday after Tiffany’s acquisition was announced by the company. Also on the following day, i.e. Tuesday, the stock traded high during the European session.
Gates, 64, had briefly overtaken Bezos, 55, intraday last month after Amazon posted its first two-year drop in profit, but shares of the world’s largest online retailer paved the downturn. After closing US markets, the index, which tracks the wealth of the richest 500 people, is updated every trading day. Bernard Arnault, Europe’s richest person, is third with $102.7 billion.
