Although vulnerable groups were affected by the health crisis sparked by the Coronavirus, other parties have reaped great benefits.
In a report published in the French newspaper LE Nouvel Observateur, the writers Claude Sulla, Morgan Bertrand, Baptiste Legrand and Boris Manente made clear that 2020 and 2021 will not be a bad memory for billionaires who are the biggest beneficiaries of the leak of liquidity from central banks to support the economy, and they are not the only ones. Who have taken advantage of this crisis.
Big fortunes for billionaires
The newspaper highlights a paradox, which is that a year after the outbreak of the largest global crisis since the 1992 crisis, economic activity declined by 4.9% in industrialized countries, but it witnessed a sudden recovery, and returned to its level in February 2020.
In France, for example, some companies achieved huge profits. Shares of the "Moet Hanse Louis Vuitton" - "LVMH" - the luxury giant rose by more than 25%, as well as L'Oréal witnessed a 16% rise, which doubles The wealth of the owners, not to mention all the other shareholders.
According to a report issued by the non-governmental organization "Oxfam", "French billionaires earned nearly 175 billion euros between March and December 2020, a percentage that exceeds their level of wealth before the crisis, and this is the third highest increase after the United States." And China. "
According to Oxfam, the 10 richest men on the planet earned $ 540 billion during the same period, while it would take at least 10 years for the poorest to recoup the losses.
But why does the stock market rise despite the chaos in the economy?
The matter is very simple, the remedy that fights the crisis - which is the central bank pumping hundreds of billions of euros - is also the same poison that leads to inequality, because this money ends up in the financial and real estate markets, with no other profitable investments, so the value of government bonds and loans becomes at rates Zero or even negative interest, and this leads to the growth of the stock market, gold and bitcoin.
Billionaires are the biggest beneficiaries of the liquidity leak from central banks to support the economy during the Corona crisis (Getty Images)
Heaven of the web giants
The quarantine strengthened the dominance of the technology giants, as 2.8 million French resorted to shopping online, and "Amazon" made huge profits, and practically doubled its net profits and increased its market value from one thousand billion dollars to one billion and 696 million dollars, meaning it achieved an increase of More than 69%.
Google also witnessed an increase in advertising on the Internet, with a profit of $ 147 billion, an increase of 9%. As for Facebook (Facebook), its net income grew by 58%, and Apple achieved additional sales of 14%. Billion dollar.
The publisher of the video conferencing program "Zoom", whose market value has increased four times, has benefited. As for the social video network, TikTok, the number of its users has increased from 4.4 million to 11 million users in France only, in addition to the company. The manufacturer of electric cars "Tesla" (Tesla), which increased its capital 5 times, an increase that allowed its founder, Elon Musk, to become, on January 7, the richest man in the world, ahead of Jeff Bezos, president of Amazon.
The prosperity of China
The expert, Franco Candelon, director of the BCG Henderson Research Center, admits that China is the biggest winner from the epidemic on all political, economic and diplomatic fronts. The Chinese have made all the right choices.
Firstly, internally, "Until this February, people were angry with Xi Jinping's government and its authoritarian methods, but after seeing the scale of the epidemic in the West, they were satisfied with the resumption of normal life, and Xi Jinping's popularity recovered."
Economically, China is the only major country to avoid a recession, as the International Monetary Fund predicts that it will see a jump of 8.1% this year.
Finally, at the international level, China has benefited from the distribution of face masks and vaccines in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
China has benefited from the distribution of masks and vaccines in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Al-Jazeera)
TV is back
4 hours and 58 minutes is the time 44 million French viewers spend each day in front of the television, which is a record, and this was reflected in the rush to buy televisions, with sales increasing from 11% to 25%.
Between quarantines, curfews and closed cinemas and theaters, people have turned to the small screen in search of news and entertainment.
And at the end of 2020, the French site Salto competed with "Netflix", which exceeded 200 million subscribers around the world, and this platform, a joint initiative between TF1″ and TF1, attracted this platform. France Télévisions and M6 have more than 200,000 subscribers in just 3 months.
The appetite for food
“The food sector is emerging as the biggest winner in 2020, and widespread distribution has seen an 8.3% increase in value on public networks, which we have not seen before,” notes Director of Marketing at Kantar Joel Lee Flush.
Meanwhile, the French are reinvesting in the food industry, with a particular focus on meat, and sales of Florian Raes - a dynamic butcher from Dravel in the Esonne region - increased by 23%.
"People were watching the programs on TV and the next day they were all ordering the same product."
In addition, cookbooks have achieved great success, such as Celine Linnac's "Made in My Home" three volume books, between June and December last year, more than 820,000 copies were sold.
Sterile gel experts
For 20 years, Solibio, a small company founded by chemists Jean-Loup Bernard and his wife, Odile, specialized in "eco" cosmetics and cleaning products. The stock of alcohol needed to produce the sterile gel, they rushed to shift the factory's activity. "We were the only ones making gel in the region. We went from 500 liters per year to 500 liters per hour," they said.
The huge demands multiplied, and other products benefited from this, such as cleansing soaps, moisturizers for damaged skin, etc., and last July, when the demand for gel decreased, we were able to start making cosmetics again, and they added, "It was a difficult year, But we achieved great growth, and we do not even dare to quantify that. We were able to hire and invest. We were 20 employees a year ago, and we will reach 30 now. "