Aircraft empire patriarch dies at 93
Billionaire inherited firm from World War I aircraft designer father
Serge Dassault, the billionaire businessman and politician who inherited an aviation empire from his World War I aircraft designer father, has died. He was 93.
He succumbed Monday to heart failure in his company office just off the Avenue des Champs Elysees, said a spokeswoman for Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault. He was chairman.
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 founded the family’s main company, Parisbased aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation, maker of the Rafale military plane and the 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.
The Dassaults successfully rebuffed attempts by French President Francois Mitterrand to nationalize the company in the 1980s. Similarly, Serge had to battle restructuring attempts by then-President Jacques Chirac in the mid-1990s.
Dassault was born Serge Bloch in Paris on April 4, 1925. His father invented a type of propeller used by the French army during World War I. After starting his own eponymous aircraft manufacturer in 1936, Marcel was well-positioned to supply aircraft to the military after the outbreak of World War II.
During the war, the Bloch family, which was of Jewish heritage, was arrested by the Gestapo and stripped of its property. In 1944, Marcel was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and held as a political hostage. He was released in April 1945 when the camp was liberated.
After his release, he changed the family name to Dassault. Derived from the word for “assault” in French, it was also the alias used by Marcel’s brother, Gen. Paul Bloch, who fought in the French resistance. In 1950, Marcel converted to Catholicism.
Serge joined the family business in 1951 after graduating from France’s prestigious engineering school, Ecole Polytechnique and the Institut Superieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace.
Even though Serge distinguished himself as a student, his father had no interest in sharing power.