This Man Has Replaced Bill Gates As 2nd Richest Person In World, With $107 Billion In The Bank

As far as the recent past is concerned, we have all been used to seeing Bill Gates prominently featured as either the world's richest person or the second richest person in the world, respectively.

Not until Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took the former title away from the Microsoft co-founder, and now Bill Gates has lost his position as the second richest person in the world as well, thanks to a certain Bernard Arnault.

Reuters

Yeah, for those who don't know, that guy pictured above is Bernard Arnault, a luxury goods magnate from France, the man who's taken over Bill Gates' position as the second richest person in the world right now.

This assessment comes from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a seven year old tracker of world's wealthiest people, where Bill Gates has never occupied any other spot other than No. 1 or No. 2. But that fact finally changed.

Who is Bernard Arnault?

Seventy year old Bernard Arnault hails from France, and owns LVMH -- arguably the most glitzy, high fashion, luxury goods brand in the world -- and his company has had a record-breaking 2019 so far.

LVMH blazed a bright trail on the stock market in the first half of this week, which pushed Bernard Arnault's overall net worth to $107.6 billion, taking it ahead of Bill Gates by more than $200 million -- thereby making him the second richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Reuters

This isn't a freak occurrence, as Bernard Arnault's personal wealth has been expanding extremely fast in recent times -- Bernard Arnault has alone added about $39 billion to his fortune since the beginning of 2019, surpassing the gains of anyone -- including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates -- among the world's top 500 richest individuals.

If you remember the fire that raged at Notre Dame Cathedral earlier this year, completely destroying its heritage roof structure, Bernard Arnault (along with Salma Hayek's husband) personally pledged $200 million for the iconic structure's restoration, contributing to an overall fund of $700 million pledged by three of France's wealthiest families.

As far as we know, Bernard Arnault doesn't seem to have any great contributions in the world of technology which could be compared with the likes of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. Nor does he have a well-established philanthropic program of contributing his billions towards important causes around the world like Bill Gates.

But in the spirit of fairness, we do offer our congratulations to Mr Bernard Arnault for becoming the second richest person in the world.