Aviation industrialist forged a name for family business
French businessperson Serge Dassault known for leading inherited empire
Serge Dassault, the billionaire businessperson and politician who inherited an aviation empire from his First World War aircraft-designer father, died. He was 93. He succumbed Monday to heart failure in his company office just off the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, said a spokesperson for Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault.
One of two sons born to aviation legend Marcel Dassault and his wife, Madeleine Minckes, Serge forged a name as a fierce guardian of the family’s businesses and an outspoken conservative politician.
Though Dassault expanded the family’s business interests into real estate, auction houses and media, he had to contend with critical comparisons to his powerful father, Marcel, who founded the family’s main company, Paris-based aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation, maker of the Rafale military plane and Falcon corporate jet.
“France has lost a man who dedicated his life to developing a jewel of French industry,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement. Political fights The Dassaults successfully rebuffed attempts by French President Francois Mitterrand to nationalize the company in the 1980s.
His father invented a type of propeller used by the French army during the First World War. During the war, the Bloch family, which was of Jewish heritage, was arrested by the Gestapo and stripped of their property.
Serge later changed the family name to Dassault — from the “assault” in French, and the alias used by his brother, General Paul Bloch, who fought in the French resistance. Good student Serge joined the family business in 1951 after graduating from Ecole Polytechnique and the Institut Superieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace.
“It’s first and foremost a great industrialist who is gone,” said Manuel Valls, former prime minister, in a statement.
“He profoundly modernized the Dassault company.” Newspaper buy In March 2004, Dassault bought Le Groupe Figaro, publisher of one of France’s most widely-read newspapers.
Dassault also followed his father’s lead into politics, though Marcel, who served on France’s National Assembly, rarely attended Assembly sessions. Graft allegations In 1998, a court gave him a twoyear suspended sentence for bribing politicians to win defence contracts. In 2009, he was found guilty of making cash payments to voters. His career was tainted by these incidents.