During the last days it has been a game of musical chairs at the top of the Forbes ranking of the greatest fortunes on the planet. After briefly passing Elon Musk on Wednesday, Bernard Arnault (and his family) took a step back before retaking the lead on Thursday.
And since then it has widened the gap. This Thursday during the session, the fortune of the family of the founder of LVMH surpassed even that of the head of Tesla by about 3,000 million dollars. This Friday morning before the opening of the stock markets, the French remained 1,200 million ahead of the American.
If Musk remains ahead of Arnault in the Bloomberg ranking, which only takes into account personal wealth and not family wealth, the gap has been reduced to a minimum by 2022. As of January 1, the wealth gap reached 92.4 billion of dollars between the two great fortunes (270.2 billion for Musk, 177.8 billion for Arnault). Now it is only 3 billion dollars (171 billion for Musk, 168 billion for Arnault).
Bernard Arnault has twice reached the rank of the world’s first fortune in recent months, but Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk quickly took him over in stride.
Almost 100 billion lost by Musk
This time, he may have left to maintain his position. Because if the stock markets are gray since the central banks have tightened access to credit, it is the technological values that are most penalized. As a result, tech billionaires saw their wealth collapse in 2022: -$99.2 billion for Elon Musk (Tesla), -79 billion for Jeff Bezos (Amazon), -24 billion for Bill Gates (Microsoft), -40 billion each for Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), -82 billion for Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook).
But at the same time, the head of LVMH has lost “only” 9.8 billion dollars. While the tech giants are suffering from the backlash of the post-COVID-19 period, in which their valuation hit new highs, the luxury sector is flourishing more than ever.
Thanks to a clientele little affected by inflation, Luxury giants such as LVMH, Kering or Hermès registered double-digit growth for its sales in the third quarter, ignoring the health restrictions in China, one of its main markets, and the rise in costs. LVMH, the world number 1 in the sector, achieved €19.75 billion in sales in the third quarter, up 19% at comparable exchange rates.
After making 12 billion euros of net profit in 2021, the owner of Louis Vuitton or Moët et Chandon could do even better in 2022. During the first six months of the year, more than 6.5 billion euros the group earned, i.e. , 23% more than in the same period of the previous year.
The luxury market will more than double
While Elon Musk is embroiled in the business of Twitter, a non-profit venture and yet paid some $44 billion by the billionaire, the signs are green for Bernard Arnault. China, which alone concentrates 20% of the group’s activity, has eased its sanitary restrictions and seems to gradually come out of its zero covid policy that penalizes it financially.
More generally, the global luxury market is up 13% this year according to an annual study by consultancy Bain and Company. If next year were less spectacular, the firm estimates the growth of the sector between 3 and 8% according to the different scenarios.
Enough to attract investors who are driving up the stock prices of the giants in the sector and therefore the assets of the French billionaires who are overrepresented in this sector of activity.
Source: BFM TV
