Bernard Arnault bought the company that owned Dior for one symbolic franc
In 1984 a young property developer from Roubaix won control of a struggling textile empire for a ceremonial single franc. Inside it sat Christian Dior. Bernard Arnault kept Dior, sold nearly everything else, and went on to build LVMH, the world's biggest luxury group, making himself one of the richest people alive.
Arnault was born in Roubaix on 5 March 1949. His father ran the civil engineering firm Ferret-Savinel, his mother was a pianist with a fascination for Dior, and a devout grandmother raised him strictly Catholic. He studied piano, attended schools in Roubaix and Lille, and graduated in engineering and mathematics from the École Polytechnique in 1971. Joining the family company, he persuaded his father to sell the construction arm and move into real estate, and he led the firm from 1978 to 1984.
With backing arranged through Antoine Bernheim of Lazard Frères, he took over Financière Agache and then won the contest for Boussac Saint-Frères. Cutting 9,000 jobs in two years earned him the nickname The Terminator. He kept only Dior and the Le Bon Marché department store, and by 1987 the business earned 112 million dollars on 1.9 billion in revenue.
That year Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy merged into LVMH, a combination supposed to be too big for any hostile raider. Nobody anticipated an insider. Arnault built a stake with Guinness in 1988, bought more when Louis Vuitton's camp tried to form a blocking bloc, and by January 1989 held 43.5 percent of the shares. He pushed out Vuitton's president Henry Racamier and on 13 January 1989 was elected chairman of the management board. Over the next eleven years sales and profits grew fivefold and market value fifteenfold, as Céline, Berluti and Kenzo joined the group.
LVMH is now the eurozone's most valuable listed company. Arnault also bought newspapers, losing money on La Tribune before swapping it for Les Échos at 240 million euros in 2007, and gave 200 million euros toward rebuilding Notre-Dame after the 2019 fire. A bid for Belgian citizenship stirred controversy. By December 2025 Forbes put his fortune at 190.4 billion dollars and Bloomberg at 203 billion.
Source: Bernard Arnault
