How did Bernard Arnault started his business?

Bernard Alnault is a business magnate, investor, and art collector from France.  He is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of the world’s largest luxury goods company, LVMH Mot Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE.

Bernard Arnault began his career at Ferret-Savinel in 1971 and served as its president from 1978 to 1984.

Arnault, who was a young real estate developer at the time, learned in 1984 that the French government was about to select someone to take over the Boussac Saint-Frères empire, a textile and retail conglomerate that owned Christian Dior.

Bernard Arnault acquired the Financière Agache, a luxury goods company, with the assistance of Antoine Bernheim, a senior partner at Lazard Frères.

He became CEO of Financière Agache and later won the bidding war for Boussac Saint-Frères, purchasing the group for a symbolic one franc and effectively taking control of Boussac Saint-Frères.

After Arnault bought Boussac, he sold nearly all of the company’s assets, keeping only the Christian Dior brand and the department store Le Bon Marché.  By 1987, the company was back in the black, with earnings of $112 million on $1.9 billion in revenue.

In 1987, he co-founded LVMH with Mot Hennessy CEO Alain Chevalier and Louis Vuitton President Henry Racamier.

LVMH has grown to become the largest company in the Eurozone by market capitalization under Arnault’s leadership, with a record of 313 billion euros ($382 billion) as of May 2021.