It wasn’t a great year for France’s billionaires.
Three of the wealthiest people in that country—Bernard Arnault, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, and François Pinault—lost a combined $70 billion in 2024, Bloomberg reported on Friday. That’s in large part due to the luxury slowdown that’s been occurring over the past couple of years, as the three control LVMH, L’Oréal, and Kering, respectively.
It’s a far way for all three to fall, as their fortunes skyrocketed during the pandemic while consumers spent their pent-up cash on luxury goods across categories, from high-end clothes to jewelry to skin-care products. Arnault—whose company controls brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany & Co.—was at one point the richest person on the planet. Now he sits at No. 5 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and he’s lost more money than any of the other 500 wealthiest people in the world.
Bettencourt Meyers, meanwhile, was once the richest woman on the planet, Bloomberg noted. And last year she became the first woman with a net worth of more than $100 billion. But now she does not hold either title. Pinault, whose Kering oversees Gucci, has watched his net worth plummet 64 percent from its high in August 2021—the largest percentage decline in that time period for anyone still on Bloomberg’s ranking.
The reasons for their losses are the same ones that the luxury industry has been facing all year, Bloomberg wrote. Consumers in China, a big growth market for luxury goods, have been decreasing their spending as of late. At the same time, many luxury companies have been contending with leadership changes, and France’s volatile political climate hasn’t been any help either.
“The Chinese consumer was supposed to be the growth engine of 2024 but that didn’t materialize,” Ariane Hayate, a fund manager at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management, told Bloomberg. “There’s also been luxury fatigue after three years of extraordinary growth as revenge spending faded.”
While Arnault, Bettencourt Meyers, and Pinault may not be ending the year on a high note, there are some glimmers of hope heading into 2025. According to analysts at HSBC Holdings, sales in China aren’t dropping any further, and they’ve actually been increasing in the United States. As they told Bloomberg, the third quarter of 2024 may have been the worst of it.
“Tech took the upper hand over luxury this year but luxury may make a comeback in the course of 2025,” Hayate said. “I can envisage a rebound for the sector from the second half of 2025.”
Maybe that optimism will lead to a happy new year after all.
Authors
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Tori Latham
