Bernard Arnault, currently the world’s richest man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, might be about to lose that title again after shares in his LVMH luxury goods business tumbled.
As a result of the 5% drop in LVMH shares this week, almost US$11bn has been wiped from his fortune.
Fears that the luxury goods boom that propelled him to top spot might be stalling due to recession worries in the US and Chinese demand waning have driven the change of mood.
Arnault, through LVMH, owns some of the world’s best-known posh brands including Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessy, Tiffany and Tag Heuer.
This week’s fall in LVMH’s share price was the largest in over 12 months and part of a wider retrenchment among luxury goods makers that saw almost US$50bn of value lopped from the sector overall.
It has brought Tesla boss Elon Musk back within touching distance of the top spot again.
Arnault and Musk have been swapping places at the top of the billionaires’ leaderboard for months.
After this week's slide, the 74-year-old Frenchman is worth US$211bn compared to US$180bn for the Tesla boss with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in third place.
LVMH recently became the first European company ever to attain a market value of US$500bn or half a trillion, but the dip in the share price has now trimmed this to around US$440bn.