![\"Bernard](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/c50f.jpeg\")
Bernard Arnault – AFP<\/p>\n
In “Bernard Arnault, son univers impitoyable,” published by La Tribu, fashion industry specialist Audrey Millet<\/a> looks back on the childhood of this scion of a well-to-do Roubaix family- his parents ran a construction company- and traces his rise to become one of the richest men in the world, presiding over a family fortune that Bloomberg estimated at $162 billion in June 2026.<\/p>\n The author recalls his time at the prestigious French \u00c9cole Polytechnique, where he excelled in probability theory but, if his grades are anything to go by, less so in general knowledge. The book devotes a few lines to his compulsory internship at the \u00c9cole d’application du g\u00e9nie in Angers, where the military concluded that he was “unfit to be entrusted with a position of responsibility.”<\/p>\n “What the French army then identified as failures of command, the management thinking of the 1990s would relabel as agility, transformational leadership and entrepreneurial spirit. The world would change its frame of reference,” notes Audrey Millet.<\/p>\n Then came the acquisitions: first Boussac in 1984, a textile empire that owned the jewel Christian Dior<\/a>; then LVMH, at the time comprising Louis Vuitton<\/a> and Mo\u00ebt-Hennessy, after manoeuvres that led to an investigation by the Commission des Op\u00e9rations de Bourse.<\/p>\n Dozens of other houses were subsequently acquired to build the current empire of 75 companies: Givenchy<\/a>, Kenzo<\/a>, Guerlain<\/a>, Sephora<\/a>, Pommery, as well as Les Echos and Paris Match. Some takeover attempts failed, such as Gucci<\/a>, ultimately snapped up in 1999 by Fran\u00e7ois Pinault<\/a>‘s PPR group, or Herm\u00e8s<\/a>, a case in which LVMH was sanctioned by the Autorit\u00e9 des march\u00e9s financiers.<\/p>\n The book also suggests the support the businessman received from the French state, notably for the Boussac takeover: “It was the French state that lawfully financed the operation”, writes the author. In early June, Le Canard encha\u00een\u00e9 reported pressure on La Tribu from people close to the billionaire; La Tribu is part of the Les Nouveaux Editeurs group- in which Fran\u00e7ois-Henri Pinault<\/a>, chairman of the luxury group Kering<\/a>, has a stake via his holding company, Art\u00e9mis<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I can tell you that the pressure was very strong,” the book’s publisher, Julia Pavlowitch, told AFP, without elaborating. “This book is a free publication from an independent publisher, in no way influenced by its shareholding… It’s a traditional edition, which is becoming increasingly rare,” continued the publisher.<\/p>\n Contacted by AFP, LVMH declined to comment.<\/p>\n Paris (France), 10 June 2026 (AFP)\n <\/p>\n \n Copyright \u00a9 2026 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By AFP Published June 10, 2026 From his childhood in northern France to his presence at Donald Trump‘s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[163],"tags":[5748,31831,762,17145,12,2453,21420,61174,61170,17856,61172,3479,61171,5285,2961,768,769,61175,27386,9090,61176,61173],"class_list":["post-212686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bernard-arnault","tag-artemis","tag-beauty","tag-bernard-arnault","tag-dior","tag-donald-trump","tag-fashion","tag-francois-pinault","tag-francois-henri-pinault","tag-givenchy","tag-gucci","tag-guerlain","tag-hermes","tag-kenzo","tag-kering","tag-louis-vuitton","tag-luxury","tag-lvmh","tag-millet","tag-moet-chandon","tag-network","tag-professionals","tag-sephora"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117205331281135259","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}