L'Oréal heir is first woman to amass $100 billion fortune
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers became the first woman to amass a $100 billion fortune, marking another milestone for the heiress and for France's expanding fashion and cosmetics industries.
Her wealth jumped to $100.2 billion on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The milestone came as shares of L'Oréal SA, the beauty products empire founded by her grandfather, rose to a record high, with the stock set for its best year since 1998.
Despite the gain, Bettencourt Meyers' fortune is still significantly less than that of French compatriot Bernard Arnault, founder of luxury goods purveyor LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, who was second in the global ranking with $179.4 billion as of Wednesday's close.
The reclusive Bettencourt Meyers, 70, is vice chair of the board of L'Oréal, a globespanning $268 billion company in which she and her family are the single biggest shareholders with a stake of nearly 35%.
Her sons, Jean-Victor Meyers and Nicolas Meyers, are also directors. Run by executives from outside the family for decades, the company was founded in 1909 by Bettencourt Meyers' chemist grandfather, Eugene Schueller, to produce and sell a hair dye he had developed.
As an only child, Bettencourt Meyers came into her wealth following the 2017 death of her mother, Liliane Bettencourt. Online retailer Zulily is closing, vows refund for unfilled orders
The U.S. online retailer Zulily is closing down, surprising customers and laying off hundreds of workers after efforts to salvage the business failed.
The Seattle-based company said in a notice on its website that it had tried to fill all pending orders and expected to manage that within the coming two weeks. Zulily said it was trying to ensure that orders that could not be filled were canceled and refunded and offered a contact for customers who did not get their orders or refunds.
“This decision was not easy nor was it entered into lightly. However, given the challenging business environment in which Zulily operated, and the corresponding financial instability, Zulily decided to take immediate and swift action,” said the notice, signed by Ryan C. Baker, vice president at management consultant Douglas Wilson Companies, which is handling the receivership for the company.
Founded in 2010 by Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon, Zulily made a splash with products catering to families with young children and staged a successful IPO on Nasdaq in 2013. But it was taken private after it was acquired in 2015 for $2.4 billion by QVC parent company Qurate, formerly known as Liberty Interactive.
The company's liquidation followed several rounds of layoffs as Zulily struggled to compete with Amazon. OpenAI, Microsoft sued by NY Times over copyrighted material
Compiled from Bloomberg and Associated Press reports.
Q
How is your company addressing this accessibility issue?
AWe have glasses, and those glasses really allow people to see a lot more color. Essentially, what they do is manipulate light coming through the lens, we pull those signals apart, so it reduces that level of confusion.
In addition to the products, we do a lot of advocacy through our Color Accessibility Program.
QWhat is the Color Accessibility Program? What are some examples of work the program has done?
AWe work with state parks, entertainment venues, museums all around the world, to enable them to be able to loan out our glasses to colorblind folks that come to their locations. This allows those folks to enjoy the art museum, the scenery, being able to see more color.
Then beyond that, we also work in school systems to be able to provide loaner programs. And we do a lot around education. We create these sideby-side images that show what a normal color vision person would see and what someone who is colorblind sees.
When parents see it, it really lands with them what their child who is colorblind is going through.
QCan you talk about the future of the company?
AThere's much more awareness of the issue globally. There are 350 million people worldwide who are colorblind; 13 million just in the U.S. So we've only really scratched the surface.
Right now we're working on solutions to go into contact lenses. And we're working on solutions with lighting. And every year we do our Color Blindness Awareness Month, and this year there were over 400 institutions around the world that were participating.
We are a business. We are here to make money, but at the same time, and this is a big thing for me, I want to do something that does good in the world. So