LVMH boss is France's richest man
The CEO of the French luxury company LVMH is France’s richest man with a fortune worth some 22.76 billion euros. Bernard Arnault tops the French fat-cats league, two-thirds of whom inherited their wealth.
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Luxury company boss Arnault come out on top of the business weekly magazine
Challenges annual ranking of France’s well-to-do.
The American magazine Forbes puts Arnault in fourth place in its league table of the world’s richest people.
The second richest person in France, according Challenges, is Gerard Mulliez, the founder of the Auchan supermarket chain.
He was top of the list back in 2008, but the economic crisis has hit him and his fortune is now a mere 19 billion euros.
In third place is France’s richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, the scandal-hit L’Oréal heiress whose daughter is trying to get her judged too senile to manage her own finances.
The top 10 includes several other founders and heirs of big French luxury groups.
According to a Société Générale and Forbes poll, only one third of French fortunes are self-made. Two thirds come from inheritance – the opposite of the situation in US, China or Brazil.
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