It would be odd to think that someone who used to be the richest man in the world is now “only” the fifth richest person in the world, but that is exactly what happened to Bernard Arnault. Arnault is the founder and acting CEO of LVMH Moët Hennest Louis Vuitton, a fashion luxury behemoth.
In March 2024, Arnault was estimated to be worth $231 billion, which put him ahead of Elon Musk who owns X, Tesla, and SpaceX, as well as Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
Remarkably, Arnault’s fortune shrunk by a staggering $54 billion in mid-September 2024 to $177 billion, placing him only $1 billion ahead of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison in fifth.
Bernard Arnault’s net worth has shrunk by $30 billion in 2024
Arnault lost $30 billion in 2024, meaning he has lost the most amount of money in 2024. This is amongst 500 individuals ranked by Bloomberg.
It has truly been a bad year for Arnault, as he is the only one amongst the other 18 billionaires who are in the red for 2024. The other seventeen have earned at least $14 billion and as much as a mouth-watering $63 billion.
Bloomberg wealth rankings are not the only ones that have placed Arnault in red. For instance, Forbes wealth rankings also show that Arnault has gone from a fortune of $233 billion in March to $175 billion in September.
This loss has been further reflected by LVMH’s stock. Arnault’s company has seen a 16 percent slump in LVMH’s stock price and has effectively set it at its lowest in two years. The “Wolf in Cashmere” as Arnault is known in the financial world, owns almost 48 percent of the luxury fashion conglomerate, which includes world-class brands like Louis Vuitton, Sephora, and Tiffany & Co.
It has become clear that LVMH has suffered from troubles from within the corporation. The conglomerate did not post healthy numbers in the first half of the year, and underlying revenues only moved by a small margin of 2 percent to be precise. Additionally, income from operations was of a mere 8 percent.
Underlying profits for LVMH were even worse. This indicator tanked by 26 percent in the wines and spirits business, 19 percent in their watches and jewelry, and 6 percent in fashion and leather.
This has caused Arnault to make radical decisions. After the worrying underlying numbers posted by LVMH, in China, Sephora cut its 4,000 people workforce by 10 percent, quoting a “climate of economic and geopolitical uncertainty” as the reason behind the cuts.
Economic analysts believe the luxury industry’s post-pandemic boom has leveled off, given that consumers are struggling to afford such goods amidst high levels of global inflation, high interest rates, and fears of a recession.
