Aviation magnate Dassault dies at 93

PARIS — French business executive Serge Dassault, a top aviation and arms industrialist and one of France’s richest men, died Monday in his Paris office. He was 93.

Dassault’s family announced his death in a brief statement to the conservative newspaper Le Figaro, which the Dassault Group owns. It said he died of a “cardiac deficiency” at the group’s office on Champs-Elysees Avenue.

Dassault was especially known for the development of France’s Mirage jet fighters, as well as for equipping the French Air Force and other militaries through global sales. He was chairman and CEO of the Dassault Group when he died, and president of honor of Dassault Aviation, which he once led.

Dassault Aviation operates a business jet completion center in Little Rock at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field.

The office of President Emmanuel Macron praised a man “who consecrated his life to developing a flagship of French industry.”

Dassault was the son of Marcel Dassault, a survivor of the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald in Germany who founded the aviation company that would form the core of the group’s business.

Like his father, Serge Dassault also became a press baron and a politician. A conservative with views on the right, he entered politics in the 1980s, representing the Essonne region south of Paris in the French Senate from 2004 until last year.