Once upon a time there was a trick to learning European history: studying the genealogical trees of royal families and their implications was enough to understand almost everything. Then came the era of British prime ministers, followed by the era of western enlargement – studying the list of American presidents helped place this period historically. In a few decades, to study the history of this strange beginning of the third millennium, perhaps in high schools and universities – if they have not been abolished by artificial intelligence – one will study the families of industrialists, those who shape the economy (and society) of our time. The Arnaults (Europe), the Waltons (America), the Ambanis (Asia), the Ruperts in Africa, the Rineharts in Oceania, each the richest families on their continent: Elon Musk’s problems with the costly takeover of Twitter and Tesla stock ousted him from the throne of the world’s richest, now occupied by Bernard Arnault, who recently turned 74, President and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the largest global luxury products group, which just achieved that on April 24 Record capitalization of $500 billion.
BERNARD ARNAULT, 74 YEARS OLD
THE FASHION ENGINEER
Arnault was born into an industrialist family in Roubaix, France, and graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique (in a past speech at university he recalled how important he sees engineering training for his life and career as an entrepreneur). In 1984, while he was involved in the reorganization of the Agache-Willot-Boussac holding (container of the Bon Marché department store and, above all, Christian Dior), he renamed it Financière Agache and from then on the inexorable rise began: he brought Christian with him Dior’s Maison returned to global success, and five years later he became the majority shareholder of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, of which he remains Chairman and Chief Executive Officer to this day (he is also Chairman of Groupe Arnault SE, his family holding company).
JEWELS, CHAMPAGNE AND HIGH-FASHION HOUSES: ARNAULT, UMBRELLA OF THE LVMH COLOSSUS, HAS ITS ALL ON EUROPEAN CREATIVITY. He remains in office for up to 80 years
He has been married twice and has five children (the question of succession is still open, but Arnault has six years before he reaches the age limit for office, which was recently raised from 75 to 80): the eldest daughter and only female Delphine (CEO of Dior). ), Antoine (CEO of Christian Dior SE, the holding company the family uses to control LVMH, and also CEO of Berluti and non-executive chairman of Loro Piana), Alexandre (executive vice president of Tiffany & Co), Frédéric (CEO Tag Heuer) and Jean, the youngest (Head of Watchmaking at Louis Vuitton). LVMH’s numbers can be explained by the decision to diversify through targeted acquisitions (over the years Celine, Bulgari, Fendi, Rimowa, Tiffany have joined the group), to gain full control over distribution and retail pricing (100% at full prices) to retain price) and scalability.
The philosophy, on the other hand, is very European – very French – to bet on creativity and taste, which can lead to a frightening marginalization that only the luxury market can. On the other hand, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis’ Prime Minister, invented it. It is significant that America’s wealthiest family amassed their vast wealth not through technology or finance, but through commerce. Not the production and sale of luxury goods like the Arnaults, but the sale of popular wholesalers. That of the Walmart supermarkets owned by the Walton family.
THE TOP TEN
– 1 BERNARD ARNAULT AND FAMILY
Fortune: 211 billion. Country: France
– 2 ELON MUSK Net Worth: 180 billion Country: USA
– 3 JEFF BEZOS Net worth: 114 billion Country: USA
– 4 LARRY ELLISON Net worth: 107 billion Country: USA
– 5 WARREN BUFFETT Net worth: 106 billion Country: USA
– 6 BILL GATES Assets: 104 billion Country: USA
– 7 MICHAEL BLOOMBERG Net worth: 94.5 billion Country: USA
– CARLOS SLIM HELU AND FAMILY Net worth: 93 billion Country: Mexico
– 9 MUKESH AMBANI Net Worth: 83.4 billion. Country: India
– 10 STEVE BALLMER Net worth: 80.7 billion Country: USA – Sam Walton (America), founder of the American dynasty that founded Walmart. The group is the largest private employer in the US (Photo Mingasson/Getty) THE WALTON COUSINS AND THE RETAIL GIANT
LOW PRICES (AND SALARIES).
The Waltons are America’s richest family ($234 billion according to Bloomberg): About half of Walmart’s shares are held by seven heirs to founders Sam Walton (died 1992) and his brother James “Bud” (died 1995). The heirs include Sam’s three surviving children – Rob, Jim and Alice – his daughter-in-law Christy and son Lukas, and Bud’s two daughters Ann and Nancy. Rob Walton was Chairman of the Board for more than two decades and remains on the Board with current Chairman Greg Penner, his son-in-law (the family also includes Arvest Bank, which operates 16 banks in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas). . The Waltons have a precise, very American, provincial ethos that couldn’t be further from the Arnaults’ cosmopolitan Paris: low retail prices, continuous discounts, very difficult negotiations with suppliers, very low labor costs (average per hour before the pandemic). The wage of $14.26, which equates to about $25,200 a year for full-time Walmart employees, was below the national poverty line for a family of four. And at least publicly, the Waltons lead a rather modest lifestyle despite their vast wealth (the Waltons’ net worth is about $234 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index). However, not all Waltons work in the family business: there are those who have chosen to “pursue areas of personal passion”).
The origins lie in 1962 in Arkansas
Sam Walton, the founder, opened the first Walmart store in Arkansas in 1962 and had four children with Helen Robson: Rob, John, Jim and Alice. When Sam died in 1992, Walmart stock was in a family safe: each of his children owned 20% of Walton Enterprises, while he and Helen each owned 10%. Helen inherited 10% (tax free, thanks to a clever operation by her advisors) from Sam when he died. Walton’s low profile, very Southern, meant the news was met with hype by the American press when Samuel Robson Walton aka “Rob”, Walton’s eldest son and CEO until 2015, unveiled his $15 million Daytona coupe destroyed.
John, the second son who had served with the Green Berets in Vietnam, died in a plane crash in 2005, leaving behind a widow and a son. James Walton, known as Jim, is the youngest son of the Arvest Bank family’s founder and chairman. He also served on the board of Walmart before being succeeded by his son Steuart in 2016. Today he runs Walton Enterprises – the private company dedicated solely to the investments and finances of the Walton family – from humble offices in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The passion for art of “little” Alice
The youngest sister, Alice Walton, who has no children, never took an active part in running the family business: she owns a huge art collection. The foundation of the legacy is the founding idea of the founder: obsessive attention to logistics, complete control over trucking service to and from Walmart regional warehouses. Walton’s streamlining of logistics led to exponential growth, from 190 stores in 1977 to 800 in 1985. Walmart’s dominance (4,634 stores across the United States) led to the so-called “Walmart Effect” from the title of Charles Fishman’s book from 2006, the Walmart Effect, which refers to the economic impact on small local businesses when a giant like Walmart opens a location near them. The Walmart effect typically manifests itself by putting small retailers out of business and reducing wages for competitor employees. The mechanism is simple in its brutality: Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States and, thanks to its size, can actually dictate the desired price to the suppliers. That’s why Walmart sells its goods at lower prices than other smaller companies: When Walmart opens a new location, the lower prices and the huge variety of goods in its stores tend to drive consumers away from local retailers. As sales fall, smaller local businesses lose profits and cut costs. Sometimes they close. In cases where Walmart has exited a location, the negative competitive impact has been shown to persist even after the giant exited.
– The Ambanis: from left the head of the Mukesh family, Rachida, fiancee of his son Anant (at his side), his wife Nita, his niece (behind her husband), next to his mother Sloka and on the right his father Akash, second son of the Tycoons (Sujit Jaiswal/Afp via Getty) THE NEW MAHARAJAS OF INDIA: THE AMBANI
AND THE ROOM FOR RENT
Asia’s richest family may come as a surprise, because they are neither Chinese nor Japanese, but Indians. They are the Ambanis, led by Mukesh Ambani (born April 19, 1957), heir to the fortune of Reliance Industries, an energy, media and textiles giant, the largest capitalized company in India. He is the eldest son of Patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani (1932-2002), a self-made man who founded Reliance in a single rented room with a cousin. Mukesh Ambani is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of Reliance Industries. If the Waltons’ verb is discretion (aside from the shattered special-order series), the Ambanis love pomp: The family has lived in Antilia since 2012, a 27-story building in Mumbai that cost two billion euros to build and that employs a workforce of 600 people (at Buckingham Palace it’s only 400, everything is relative). Over 37,000 square feet of floor space with a 168 car garage, ballroom, 9 high speed elevators, theater, rooftop gardens, swimming pools and spa. It is the most expensive private residence in the world.
Ten years of succession disputes. The AMBANI (Textile, Media, Energy) own the most expensive house in the world: 27 floors and over 600 employees
And considering that when Dhirubhai Ambani died in 2002 leaving no will, his two sons Mukesh and Anil started a succession dispute that lasted more than ten years. The mother, Kokilaben, had to intervene to settle the dispute and divide the family business between the brothers: Anil’s telecommunications and financial services remained intact, Mukesh retained control of textiles, oil and gas, petrochemicals and refining (the division of assets also included) . combined with a ten-year non-competition clause). The recent news that Mukesh Ambani has secured the rights to stream Succession – the TV series which many believe is inspired by the Murdochs – alongside James Murdoch makes us smile. Because Ambani also owns Viacom18, and with Succession, has decided to step up competition with Disney in one of the world’s fastest growing markets for streaming, India (research firm Media Partners Asia, writes the Financial Times, predicts that India’s online video industry Annual sales are projected to double to $6.5 billion by 2027 and the country is estimated to have a streaming audience of over half a billion people.Viacom18 is a partnership between Ambani’s conglomerate Reliance Industries, Paramount, and a group of investors, backed by a Qatari sovereign wealth fund run by Murdoch and Uday Shankar, a former Disney executive.
– The Ruperts (Africa): from left Johann Rupert, to the right his son Anton, the heir, at the Geneva World Clock Exhibition ANTON AND HUBERTE RUPERT
THE AFRICAN LUXURY
The richest family in Africa, the Ruperts from Stellenbosch, are South Africans. The patriarch is Anton Rupert (1916-2006) who, with his wife Huberte Rupert (1919-2005), founded the Rembrandt Group, which expanded from the tobacco industry into the luxury sector and founded Richemont in 1988 (Richemont included among others: Cartier, Dunhill , Sulka). , Seeger, Piaget, Vacheron Constantin and Montblanc). Anton and Huberte had three sons: Johann (president of Richemont), Antonij and Hanneli.
The Ruperts’ success began with tobacco, then they invested in luxury. YOU ARE NOW NUMBER ONE IN WATCHMAKING – Center Gina Hope Rinehart (Oceania) who runs the mining company founded by her father Lang Hancok who discovered the world’s largest iron deposit (Photo Camera Press/Philip Gostelow/Contrasto) LA BIGGEST WEALTH IN OCEANIA
AND GINA RINEHART’S ETHICS
Oceania’s richest family, the Australian mining family Rinehart, is led by 69-year-old Gina, daughter of Hancock Prospecting founder Lang Hancock, who died in 1992. Gina Rinehart and her children were still on the subject of family hits At the center of a very complicated legal battle is the management of a multi-billion family fund that blocked dividend payments of at least $2 billion in 2019. In a rare interview (with written replies) given by The Australian Financial Review to mark his three decades at the helm of Hancock Prospecting, Rinehart says he has no intention of slowing down as he nears his seventies and will furthermore in iron, copper, lithium, gold and rare earths.
REINHART IS THE QUEEN OF THE MINING INDUSTRY. YEARS AGO HE SAID, “WANT MONEY? Quit drinking and smoking and work more»
It also remains open to acquisitions by other companies. A staunch Trumpist, she had sparked controversy back in 2012 when she called on the Australian government to lower the minimum wage – “It could help employers hire more staff” – while also criticizing Australians’ work ethic: “If you’re jealous of who that is more money, don’t sit there and complain; do something to earn more. Don’t waste time drinking, smoking and socializing. Work harder, that’s all.”