The only European among the richest men in the world is French: Bernard Arnault, with a personal fortune of around $200 billion.

13 comments

  1. The 74-year-old Arnault, who was born in the city of Roubaix, in northern France, is an anomaly of global capitalism. As president of the LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) group, he presides over a classic, niche and elitist industry — that of luxury products — in the era of Silicon Valley billionaires and technological populism.

    He’s a Frenchman in a club of very rich people — the likes of Musk and Jeff Bezos — that, in recent history, has been monopolized by Americans and Chinese.

    He had surpassed all of them by the end of 2022 and has since consolidated his position.

    According to Bloomberg’s most recent tally, as of Friday, June 2, his fortune, bolstered by an increase in profits and a rising stock price, now exceeds $200 billion — greater than the annual budget of the European Union.

    Arnault owns more than 40% of the shares in LVMH, a company that, in the last five years, has appreciated by 166% on the stock market and is now valued at around $500 billion.

    [Source](https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2023-06-06/the-great-predator-of-luxury-this-is-how-bernard-arnault-built-his-lvmh-empire-valued-at-500-billion.html)

  2. Curious but how do European billionaires and their families hold on to so much of their wealth over generations if the estate/inheritance tax in European countries is so high? The US also has a 40% estate tax on inheritances over 10M but there’s easy loopholes to avoid it… similar case in Europe?

  7. IMHO this is a good sign.

    That individuals can amass such wealth is obscene, and a sign for a failed society. And I’m not even THAT left leaning …

  9. You notice that on this list are people who changed the world building a company/technology that changed the world. Then there is a guy who sell overpriced clothes to russians, chinese and rentiers from EU.

    You can pat yourself on the back how its good that there are no Europeans on the list because of how equal we are in Europe. We are not. It just we are not producing anything of extraordinary value. No world changing technologies. We have great people, every country has, but any brilliant person who has a world changing idea will leave EU for USA 🙂 ^(of course because how good it is here 🙂 thats why they leave.)

  11. Always good to remember:

    This list pretty much only shows wealth in listed companies, and that we know of.

    There are probably richer persons in the world, but their wealth is not as easy to track as the persons on this list.

    Eg, Putin would probably for all practical purposes be above these people before the war in Ukraine, but we don’t have a good way of adequately measuring his wealth. Same goes for several other dictators, oligarchs, you name it.

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