Before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, the French Bernard Arnault was Monday, for a few hours, at the top of the Forbes ranking of the biggest fortunes in the world.
He then moved back behind the American and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Bernard Arnault's fortune is over $ 180 billion.
The CEO of the world number one in luxury LVMH (Louis Vuitton, Dior ...), the French Bernard Arnault, briefly took the lead of the Forbes ranking of the world's largest fortunes on Monday, before returning behind the American Jeff Bezos at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.
For a few hours, between the opening of the meeting in Paris at 7:30 a.m. GMT and that of New York at 1:30 p.m. GMT, Bernard Arnault dethroned the founder of Amazon by rising to first place in this ranking which is updated in real time based on stock market prices.
A fortune of over $ 180 billion
Around 2:15 p.m. GMT, Bernard Arnault's fortune was valued at $ 186.5 billion, behind that of Jeff Bezos (187.7 billion) but ahead of that of Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX (147, 6 billion) and Bill Gates (125.9 billion), the founder of Microsoft.
Bloomberg's real-time ranking, which uses a different methodology, showed the same order on Monday between the four men.
France has 40 billionaires in the Forbes ranking, including Stéphane Bancel, the boss of the American company Moderna (manufacturer of the eponymous anti-Covid vaccine), who recently joined.
"The crises make us stronger," said Bernard Arnault at the end of April, commenting on the good financial results of the world number one in luxury, the largest market capitalization in Europe.