“As long as I’m not the richest man in the world, I won’t really be happy,” Bernard Arnault once said.
The day has come. Arnault, the founder and CEO of luxury goods group LVMH, slipped from being the world’s richest person to the fifth-richest when his company’s stock price fell 20%, reducing his net worth by $54 billion.
Arnault, who oversees dozens of iconic companies including Moët Hennessy, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Givenchy, and Fendi, was valued at $231 billion in late March, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That put him ahead of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Arnault’s net worth as of Monday was estimated at $177 billion. Arnault now ranks lower than all of these executives, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Over the last year, LVMH stock has declined by more than 16% and is now selling at around $132 per share; Arnault owns approximately 48% of the luxury giant. Arnault’s net worth has dropped by $30 billion since the beginning of 2024, making him the list’s largest loser year-to-date.