LVMH’S Arnault regains crown as world’s richest person

French businessman Bernard Jean Etienne Arnault on Thursday replaced Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person by having a staggering net worth of $197 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index data showed. Arnault is the founder and chairman of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods empire, which also owns Louis Vuitton.

Bloomberg's daily ranking, updated at the close of every trading day in New York, showed that Arnault gained $1.93 billion in a day to achieve the feat. Meanwhile, Bezos, who had been commanding the first rank since Tuesday, lost about $755 million dollars to stand at the second position. Bezos'’current net worth is $196 billion.

Arnault is the chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The company earned a revenue of about $83.4 billion in 2022 from a range of its 75 fashion and cosmetics brands. Arnault controls about half of the empire.

The Paris-based business tycoon is married to pianist Helene Mercier and has five children. All his children work at LVMH. Notably, the company acquired American jeweller Tiffany & Co in 2021 for a whopping $15.8 billion, believed to be the biggest luxury brand acquisition ever.

Arnault and Bezos are followed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the third spot. Musk had been reigning the first spot for over nine consecutive months until March 5, when Tesla shares tumbled following the report that shipments from its factory in Shanghai slumped to the lowest in more than a year.

After Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg commanded the fourth spot at $178 billion by gaining about $2 billion since the last change. Notably, Zuckerberg's net worth dipped from $2.7 billion to $176 billion on Wednesday after Meta-owned platforms Facebook and Instagram faced worldwide outages a day before that.

The data showed that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates currently holds the fifth spot, boasting a total net worth of $148 billion.