Bernard Arnault: parasite
Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury goods brand LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, has beaten out the tech bros and oil tycoons to become the richest person on the planet. (The title has been going back and forth between him and Elon Musk; this must be what economists mean by “capitalist competition”.)
Arnault has amassed a personal fortune of US$220 billion by running a conglomerate of companies that cater to the world’s richest and most powerful. His net worth has doubled since the beginning of 2020, and he hit the top of the Forbes Rich List when he gained $2.4 billion in a single day on 4 April.
In that month, LVMH became the first European company to reach a $500 billion valuation after its shares increased by 30 percent since the beginning of the year thanks to booming demand among the ultra-wealthy for high-end status symbols. While millions of people worldwide are struggling to eat or to heat their homes in winter, the rich are blowing cash on handbags with five-to-six-figure price tags and bottles of champagne worth an average person’s weekly rent.
The rising fortune of LVMH is itself a reflection of the soaring riches of the elite in recent years. A new billionaire was minted every 30 hours in the first three years of the pandemic, while a million people fell into poverty at the same rate, according to Oxfam Australia.
It’s not just the global 1 percent and their children who are fuelling the luxury goods market boom. Jean-Jacques Guiony, chief financial officer at LVMH, told the Financial Times that the upper middle classes have spurred the company’s growth and are the target of most of its tailored advertising. These are the corporate managers and other suits desperate to prove their worth and elevated station with an appropriately monogrammed accessory.
The Arnault family (Bernard’s five children all work for LVMH and are said to be locked in a Succession-style battle) hails from France, where the company is still based. French protesters stormed its lavish Parisian headquarters in April as part of a rolling strike wave against an increase to the retirement age. Arnault has frequently been the target of chants and slogans throughout the campaign—a symbol of the French elite raking in billions while President Emmanuel Macron cries poor when it comes to providing for workers.
“If you’re looking for money to finance pensions, take it from the pockets of billionaires”, Fabien Villedieu, a representative of the Sud Rail union, told a Reuters journalist after the protest.
There are many signs one can point to of the degeneracy and revolting inequality of late capitalism. The fact that the richest person in the world has made his billions by selling superfluous goodies to other rich people is perhaps the most apt.
