According to Forbes, which publishes its ranking of great French fortunes on Tuesday, 42 French people have a heritage exceeding one billion dollars, including the new entrant Stéphane Bancel, the boss of the Moderna laboratory who enters in 23rd place.
Despite the crisis due to Covid, four new French billionaires are entering the Forbes ranking, according to the French version of the magazine, which published Wednesday a list of the top three unchanged for the French ranking: Arnault-Bettencourt Meyers-Pinault.
France rose in the Forbes ranking from 39 to 42 billionaires between 2019 and 2020 – Olivier Dassault died in a helicopter crash in March having left the ranking. Together, they total a global wealth of 510 billion dollars, against 277 billion dollars in the previous ranking.
Holding 8% of the capital of Moderna Therapeutics, an American company at the forefront of the anti-Covid vaccine race, its French CEO Stéphane Bancel makes an entry directly to 23rd place in the Forbes France ranking with a fortune estimated at 3.5 billion euros.
Second entry, that of Olivier Pomel, in 34th place with 1.5 billion euros. The CEO of cloud watch company Datadog owns 6% of the shares which saw their price soar by 39% after the first day of listing on the Nasdaq, according to the magazine. The market capitalization of the company he co-founded and which is present in 24 countries has already reached 10 billion euros.
An unchanged top 10
François Feuillet follows in 35th place with a fortune of 1.5 billion euros. The CEO of Trigano owns 58% of the shares of this leading European group of motorhomes and owns 9.5 hectares of fine vines, according to Forbes.
Finally, Yves-Loïc Martin, enters 36th place with 1.4 billion euros. He is the brother of Gilles Martin who founded the Eurofins Scientific analysis laboratories, positioned in the food industry, pharmacy, environment and medical biology. He is now a director and owns 11% of the shares, according to Forbes. If the top 10 in the ranking of French billionaires remains unchanged, all have seen their fortunes increase in 2020.
The president of luxury leader LVMH, Bernard Arnault, remains in the lead with a fortune estimated by the magazine at 125.2 billion euros ahead of Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, heir to L’Oréal (61.4 billion) and François Pinault of the group of luxury Kering (35.3 billion).
