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- LVMH boss Bernard Arnault is currently the world's richest person.
- Arnault has five children — and they all work across LVMH and its brands.
- On Friday, Frédéric, one of Arnault's sons, was named head of one of the holding companies that controls LVMH.
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Bernard Arnault's fourth child has been named head of one of the family's holding companies that control luxury giant LVMH.
Frédéric Arnault, a 29-year-old, was also appointed to the LVMH board alongside his brother Alexandre in April. Those additions mean four out of Arnault's five children now sit on the LVMH board.
Arnault is currently the world's richest person with a net worth of about $215 billion, according to estimates by Bloomberg. In 2023, he became only the third person to surpass the $200 billion mark, following tech moguls Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
Arnault cofounded LVMH in the 1980s and is its CEO and chair. The French luxury conglomerate owns a range of brands covering fashion, perfume, jewelry, watches, and alcohol, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Moët & Chandon, Fenty Beauty, and Tiffany & Co.
In February 2023, Arnault's daughter, Delphine Arnault, became CEO of Dior. But it's not just Delphine who has risen up LVMH's ranks. All four of Bernard's sons work at LVMH and its brands, too.
Bernard, 75, has not said who he wants to take over from him, but it's a topic that gets discussed every time he gives one of his offspring a new role. In 2022 LVMH raised the age limit of its CEO from 75 to 80, extending Bernard's possible tenure.
"The best person inside the family or outside the family should be one day my successor," Bernard told The New York Times in September. "But it's not something that I hope is a duel for the near future."
Bernard has primed his children for leadership roles at the company since birth, though they say he never forced them to join LVMH. His offspring were sent to the best schools and as children would get quizzed on their math skills nearly every night, The Times reported.
"I didn't want them to start going to big parties," Bernard said of his children. "I made them work."
The Arnault family has been compared to HBO series "Succession," which sees the children of media mogul Logan Roy vying to take over as CEO.
"I know it's disappointing for a lot of people," Antoine Arnault, Bernard's oldest son, told The Times, "but we actually get on well."
Delphine and Antoine already sit on LVMH's board, leaving only Jean — the youngest of the siblings — off the board.
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Delphine, born in 1975, is the eldest of Bernard's five children, and his only daughter.
She started her career at McKinsey, where she spent two years as a consultant before moving to designer John Galliano's company.
Delphine worked at Christian Dior Couture as its deputy managing director from 2008 to 2013, before spending a decade as an executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, LVMH's biggest brand.
She started as the CEO and chair of Dior in February 2023.
Delphine sits on LVMH's board of directors and is a member of its executive committee — only the second woman to join it, and its youngest member when she joined it at 43.
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Antoine is Bernard's oldest son, born in 1977. Like Delphine, Antoine was born to Bernard's first wife, Anne Dewavrin.
Antoine started working at LVMH in 2005 in its advertising department. Two years later, he was appointed director of communications at Louis Vuitton, where he launched campaigns with public figures ranging from Angelina Jolie and Bono to Muhammad Ali and Mikhail Gorbachev.
In December 2022, Antoine was appointed CEO of Christian Dior SE, the holding company the family uses to control LVMH. He's also the non-executive chair of cashmere label Loro Piana.
Antoine became an LVMH board member in 2006 and has been the company's head of image and environment since 2018.
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Alexandre was born in 1992, Bernard's first son to his second wife, Helene Mercier, and is an executive vice president at Tiffany & Co.
After interning in New York at McKinsey and KKR, Alexandre moved to his father's retail empire, where he worked on digital innovation.
"I was obviously raised to be in the group," Alexandre told The New York Times in 2018, adding that it was ultimately his choice to work at LVMH and that he turned down offers from McKinsey and KKR.
Alexandre spent about four years as the CEO of German luggage brand Rimowa after reportedly persuading his father to buy an 80% stake in it in 2016. During his time at the helm, he revitalized Rimowa — including launching collaborations with Supreme and Off-White.
After LVMH bought Tiffany & Co. for $15.8 billion in 2020, Alexandre became executive vice president of product and communications at the jewelry maker at just 28 years of age.
Former President Donald Trump said in February 2023 that he had hosted Alexandre and his wife for dinner at Mar-a-Lago. "He is a young man on the move, the son of one of the great businessmen and leaders in Europe, and in the World," Trump wrote of Arnault.
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Frédéric, born in 1995, now heads one of the Arnault holding companies that controls LVMH.
Arnault's fourth child, will replace Nicolas Bazire as managing director of Financière Agache, the company said on Thursday.
The promotion is the 29-year-old's third this year. In April, he joined the luxury brand's board along with his brother Alexandre and in January, he became the CEO of LVMH watches.
After interning at McKinsey and at Facebook's AI research unit, and a brief period running a mobile payment startup, Frédéric quickly moved up the ranks at LVMH.
He joined the company full-time in 2017 as the temporary head of connected technologies at Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer. Just a year later, he became TAG Heuer's director of strategy and digital. In 2020, he was named the brand's CEO at the age of 25. The role involved managing over 2,000 people and starting a "complete transformation" of the company.
The New York Times reported that Bernard had groomed Frédéric to become TAG Heuer's leader from the start, though this wasn't entirely smooth sailing. Stéphane Bianchi, who was CEO of TAG Heuer before Frédéric and tasked with training his successor, told the newspaper they clashed "everywhere" at the start.
In his time running the company, Frédéric focused on connected watches, orchestrated a shift from wholesale to retail, grew its e-commerce sales, and negotiated a partnership with Porsche.
Frédéric was appointed head to a new role running LVMH's watches division in January. In that role, he oversees TAG Heuer, Hublot, and Zenith.
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Jean is Bernard's youngest son, born in 1998. He has a master's in financial mathematics from MIT and another in mechanical engineering from Imperial College, London, according to the Financial Times.
As a student, he interned at both Morgan Stanley and McLaren Racing and had a short stint at a Louis Vuitton retail store in Paris, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Jean became the marketing and development director of Louis Vuitton's watch division in August 2021 at the age of 23, just months after he graduated. He's now the brand's watches director.
Jean told the FT that his older brother Frédéric's work at TAG Heuer had sparked his interest in watchmaking.
"We have a close relationship and he started talking to me about the new watches and all the different things he was working on," Jean said. "I was fascinated. And that's really the turning point."
Jean told The New York Times in November 2022 that he still turns to his older brother Frédéric for work advice.
