Slowing Demand for Luxury Goods Causes Industry Execs to Lose $24 Billion

Bernard Arnault is no longer the top dog when it comes to billionaires.

The LVMH founder has seen his net worth plummet this year, part of a larger downturn in the luxury market that has caused billionaires in the field to lose a collective $24 billion in 2024 so far, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Arnault himself is down $10.8 billion year to date, with his wealth sitting at $197 billion. He’s now behind Elon Musk ($270 billion) and Jeff Bezos ($215 billion) on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Along with Arnault, luxury-world billionaires such as Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and François-Henri Pinault have seen their fortunes tumble. At the end of last year, Bettencourt Meyers became the first woman worth $100 billion, but her net worth now sits at $89.9 billion. And Pinault has seen his wealth cut in half over the past three years, Bloomberg noted, as it now sits at $27.6 billion.

In total, the six people on Bloomberg’s ranking who have made their money in luxury goods have seen their cumulative wealth drop by 5 percent this year. The rest of the 500-person group, however, has seen their net worth rise an impressive 13 percent, or $1 trillion. The gulf between the two groups hasn’t been so big since May 2022, the outlet noted.

The drop-off is a sign of the overwhelmingly choppy waters that the luxury world finds itself in right now. Many brands are struggling, with Arnault’s LVMH reporting slower sales growth in fashion and leather goods in the first quarter of 2024, Bloomberg wrote. Bettencourt Meyers’s L’Oréal, meanwhile, is experiencing a slowdown around the world and at different price points. (The company oversees its namesake brand, as well as labels like Lancôme, Yves Saint Laurent, and others.) And Pinault’s Kering said earlier this year that it’s expecting profits to drop in the first half of 2024.

LVMH, L’Oréal, and other groups are set to release their earnings reports later this month, Bloomberg noted. But the season got off to a less-than-stellar start, with Burberry replacing its CEO in response to a profit warning and Swatch noting a downturn in sales and profits. Consumers aren’t spending as much as they used to on luxury goods, and these billionaires are feeling the effects in their own pocketbooks.