£650m
French tycoons behind Gucci and Dior pledge cash to restore cathedral
THE amount pledged to help rebuild Notre Dame soared to more than £650million last night – with much of it from three superrich French dynasties.
The extraordinary response followed Emmanuel Macron’s vow to launch an international fundraising scheme to restore the cathedral.
As experts warned the painstaking work could take decades to complete, first came a pledge of £86.5million from billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault, who is married to Hollywood star Salma Hayek.
That was quickly topped by £173million from Europe’s richest man Bernard Arnault, 70, and his luxury goods company LVMH.
Then cosmetics giant L’Oreal and its founding Bettencourt family promised a further £173million.
French oil firm Total said it would contribute £86.5million.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said the city would provide £43million, while the government of the greater Paris region pledged £8.65million. As thousands poured in from individual donations to other fundraising platforms, bluechip firms including Vinci, Michelin and BNP Paribas also considering how they can help.
Mr Pinault, 56, is the chairman of the Kering group that owns the Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen fashion brands. He is estimated to be worth £19.5billion.
He told of his shock at seeing the fire and said: ‘We need to rebuild collectively this part of our history, of our culture, so it’s an urgent, urgent need to move forward, so I decided to unlock a very important amount of money to do that.’
Mr Pinault married Miss Hayek, 52, in Paris on Valentine’s Day 2009 in Paris. They have a daughter Valentina, 11.
He owns properties around the world and they moved to London five years ago.
Kering was founded as a wood and building materials company in 1963 by Mr Pinault’s father, Francois Pinault, 82. The family also owns auction house Christie’s, a 3,000-piece art collection and vineyards.
Mr Arnault, 70, runs LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, the world’s largest maker of luxury goods. The family’s fortune is estimated at £70billion and its business empire includes Christian Dior, Dom Perignon, TAG Heuer and Sephora cosmetics.
The LVMH group said in a statement that ‘in solidarity with this national tragedy’ it was also putting ‘at the disposal of the state and the concerned authorities all its teams, creative, architectural, financial’.
Mr Arnault is said to have wooed his second wife Helene Mercier, a Canadian pianist, by playing Chopin. They live with their three sons live in a 19th century house on Paris’s Left Bank.
Known as one of the world’s ‘ultimate taste-makers’, Mr Arnault has described himself as ‘ an ambassador of French heritage and culture’. His son Antoine, 41, visited the scene yesterday with his Russian supermodel partner Natalia Vodianova, 37.
L’Oreal boss Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, 65, is the world’s richest woman, with a £37.8billion fortune. She is the president of her family’s philanthropic foundation, which encourages French progress in the science and arts.
Mrs Meyers is the granddaughter of L’Oreal’s founder and the daughter of Liliane Bettencourt, who until her death aged 94 in 2017 was the world’s richest woman. As offers of help with Notre Dame’s reconstruction poured in from around the globe Peter Fuessenich, the chief architect of Cologne’s Gothic cathedral, said: ‘It will certainly take years, perhaps even decades, until the last damage caused by this terrible fire will be completely repaired.’
Cologne cathedral was heavily damaged during the Second World War. Work to repair it continues.
The Vatican said it can offer technical know-how, while Britain’s ambassador to France, Ed Llewellyn, said this country stands ready to help.
Sarah Brown, the director of the York Glaziers Trust, which cares for the windows at York Minster – which was devastated by fire in 1984 – said her team had already been in contact with colleagues in France to offer assistance.
The rebuilding task could be made easier by a digital map of Notre Dame created using laser technology three years ago.
‘It is a national tragedy’