World’s Richest Man

The Wolf in Cashmere and the King of Luxury. Bernard Arnault has many titles and a reputation for being a ruthless businessman. It works for him, because he is often the world’s richest person. Unlike the tech billionaires that usually take the title of world’s richest, Arnault instead deals in luxury as the head of LVMH, a vast empire of brands which includes Christian Dior, Tiffanys and the jewellery maker Bulgari. And unlike the Musks and Zuckerbergs of the world, he’s relatively unknown to the public. This week we talk to Benjamin Rankin, a former global executive at LVMH, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, a journalist based in Paris, and Dean Crutchfield, a brand expert, about how Arnault became so wealthy, and why he’s so unpopular in his native France.