[imagesource: Wikimedia Commons]

Elon Musk is officially not the world’s richest man.

The SpaceX/Tesla/Twitter CEO has been relegated to second place, replaced by Bernard Arnault, a French businessman best known as the chairman and CEO of the French luxury goods giant LVMH.

LVMH is the world’s largest luxury-products company, and Bernard has just become the first European to top Bloomberg’s list of the world’s wealthiest people.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Arnault’s wealth eclipsed Elon’s $164 billion fortune on Tuesday, hitting a cool $171 billion, reported CNN.

As I write this, Arnault is on $172 billion while Elon is on $161 billion.

Arnault already moved Musk down on the Forbes list of “Real Time Billionaires” last week, which is showing Arnault at $190,9 billion at the moment, and Elon at $174 billion.

Money moves fast in the world of billionaires.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by A.A (@alexandrearnault)

The difference in these two men’s net worths is down to the stock performance of the companies in which the pair own shares.

While Musk’s purchasing of Twitter hasn’t done him many favours, he is not in imminent danger of falling further down the list, still comfortably ahead of Indian industrialist Gautam Adani ($125 billion) and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($116 billion), who rank third and fourth respectively on Bloomberg’s list.

Meanwhile, Arnault is making a killing:

While Tesla (TSLA)’s share price has plummeted 54% this year, LVMH stock has held steady, supported by robust sales in the United States and Europe. The luxury market has remained relatively steady this year, even as surging inflation has led less-affluent shoppers to change their spending habits. LVMH has a market value of €362.4 billion ($386 billion).

As an engineering graduate from the prestigious Parisian École Polytechnique, Arnault was quickly promoted to chairman of the family-owned construction company, Ferret-Savinel, in 1978.

Then he took over Boussac Saint-Freres, the once-bankrupt textile group that owned Christian Dior, a celebrated French fashion house.

From there, it was only upward:

Arnault bought control of the group, returning it to profitability and embarking on a strategy to develop the world’s leading luxury goods company. “In the process, he reinvigorated Christian Dior as the cornerstone of the new organization,” according to a biography on the LVMH website.

Arnault bought a controlling stake in LVMH in 1989, two years after the group was formed by the merger of Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy. He has been chairman and CEO of the company ever since.

Arnault may not be a household name but Christian Dior to Dom Pérignon sure are.

Arnault has turned LVMH into a luxury goods powerhouse with 75 labels selling wine, spirits, fashion, leather goods, perfumes, cosmetics, watches, jewellery, luxury travel, and hotel stays over the past three decades.

Unlike Musk, Europe’s (and now the world’s) richest person keeps a much lower profile and isn’t into social media.

He was also ashamed enough to sell his private jet after being criticised on Twitter for using it so often – again, unlike Musk.

Arnault is married and has five children who all work at LVMH, in a tight race to take over their father’s business one day.

So far, it looks like 30-year-old Alexandre Arnault is ahead, having worked with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Eileen Gu, and Patek Philippe already:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by A.A (@alexandrearnault)

South China Morning Post has made him out to be quite the fella.

[source:cnn&scmp]