Thread by @bopinion

Of all the world’s billionaires, with the exception of those from China, it’s the French who have just enjoyed their most lucrative decade trib.al/VDVsgAM

LVMH boss Bernard Armault and his ilk saw their wealth balloon 439% to $443 billion between 2009 and mid-2020, fueled by Asian hunger for French luxury goods and a global real estate boom trib.al/VDVsgAM

Here’s how those billionaires stack up globally:

🇨🇳China: 1,100% increase in wealth
🇫🇷France: 439%
🇨🇦Canada: 238%
🇺🇸U.S.: 170%
🇮🇳India: 90% trib.al/VDVsgAM

While the pandemic looks like the start of a much dimmer decade, the rich won’t let this crisis go to waste.

@LionelRALaurent writes: “There are new Darwinist divides in the corporate world exposing a kind of gilded inequality at the top of society” trib.al/VDVsgAM

Soaring tech businesses can shrug off social distancing while old-school brick-and-mortar firms can’t:

💶 Arnault’s fortune has fallen by $19 billion this year
💶 Francoise Bettencourt Meyers faces competition for her title as the world’s richest woman trib.al/VDVsgAM

In France, the coronavirus crisis has prompted the ultra-wealthy to wake up to the need to pitch in more:

🧣Hermes donated $24 million to Paris’s hospital association
👜LVMH gave ventilators and made masks trib.al/VDVsgAM

In this dog-eat-dog world, every small corporate victory counts.

Arnauld’s most visible bout of Covid-19 opportunism has been to try and walk away from the mammoth LVMH takeover of Tiffany trib.al/VDVsgAM

The current climate is even offering tycoons the perfect chance to acquire more power and influence via Lagardare. These French billionaires all bought shares recently:

💰Vincent Bollore
💰Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere
💰Bernard Arnault trib.al/VDVsgAM

Now it’s clear Bollore and Arnauld are in a face-off for control for Lagardare’s asset which include:

📓Glossy magazine Paris Match
📚Book publisher Hachette
🗞Influential radio and newspaper brands trib.al/VDVsgAM

This all might seem rather quaint compared to the space ambitions of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

France’s increasingly old elites prefer radio brands to rockets. But that’s partly because globe-trotting across borders no longer looks like such a sure thing trib.al/VDVsgAM

This isn’t just a French phenomenon: Of all the business and investment strategies being pursued by the world’s billionaires, the least popular is to relocate to another country.

Still, in a crisis like this one, there’s no place like Paris trib.al/VDVsgAM