Francois Pinault: Net worth, Biography, Career

French business mogul and a self-made billionaire, Francois Pinault is the founder of the luxury business conglomerate Kering which has fashion brands such as Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Alexander Mc Queen registered under it, and Artemis, an investment company. He is the second richest man in France and ranks No.26 in the Forbes 2020 World's Billionaires list.

Net worth

$34.5B as of May 27, 2020.

Early life and education

Born on the 21^st of August 1936 in Les Champs-Geraux, Brittany, France. Pinault grew in a humble family as his father was a timber trader. Part of Pinault’s business career choice can be linked back to his father’s occupation. He never had the opportunity to finish high school nor further his education right before going into business proper. At 16, he dropped out of the College Saint-Martin, Rennes. The next stop for Pinault after dropping out of high school was enlisting with the Army at the peak of the Algerian war; this was in 1956. His stay with the Army was short-lived as he withdrew and returned back home to help with the family business—timber trading, until the death of his father.

Business Career

By 1963, Pinault ventured into timber business properly after selling off his father’s business. Using the little money, he had saved and a loan he got from Credit Lyonnais, he was able to establish his own timber and building materials trading company which he named Societe Pinault (renamed Pinault SA in 1988). The company grew and was successful right from its inception. Part of the company’s business strategy was acquiring companies facing a financial downturn and rebranding them. Another major business advantage Pinault had was government policy influence on entrepreneurship. Successful businesses were encouraged to acquire business going under or facing bankruptcy. The government policy involved letting interested successful companies purchase bankrupt companies at a subsidized rate.

Pinault’s company Societe Pinault was later renamed to Pinault SA in 1988 and went public that same year. As a public company, Pinault SA was listed in the Paris Stock exchange, and by 1993 it was renamed Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR) after it had acquired La Redoute (a French mail-order company) and La Printemps (a French department store). After expanding its business interests to investing in retail companies where he bought majority stakes. In 1992, Pinault founded Artemis, an investment company that manages all the family’s investments which is solely run by the Pinault family. Through the company, Pinault has made several investments and acquisitions some of which are Christie’s, Le Point, Ponant, and the Rennes Football club.

It, however, wasn’t so rosy for Pinault’s company as the company experienced its first major setback in 1997 after making the largest unsolicited bid in Paris at the time. The bid was for Worms, a financial service provider group. He lost the company to AGF and the Agnelli family of Italy. Shortly after the loss, the company lost two other bids which hindered its move into the financial sector. In 1996, Pinault yet lost another opportunity to explore the financial sector by failing to acquire a company affiliated with merchant banking called Navigation Mixte. Pinault-Printemps-Redoute eventually diverted its attention to exploring the luxury business line in 1999 by acquiring majority shares of 42% in the Gucci Group, and later purchased the Yves Saint Laurent Company, Boucheron, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen respectively.

In 2003, Francois Pinault stepped down as PPR’s chairman with his eldest son Francois-Henri taking over the role. Under Francois-Henri’s management, the company was renamed Kering in 2013, and it acquired more luxury brands and companies such as Pomellato, Brioni, and Girard-Perregaux. In 2016, Kering became a full-time luxury retail trader, and by 2018 became a full-time luxury group after selling off the rest of its Puma shares.

Other interests

After his marriage to his second wife, Maryvonne Campbell (1970 -), an art lover, Pinault picked a keen interest in art. His first collected work of art in 1980, a painting by Paul Serusier. He has over thousands of artworks by Picasso, Man-ray, Mondrian, Subodh Gupta, Paul McCarthy, Damien Hirst amongst other renown artists. In total, Pinault has at least 5,000 art collections worth over $1.8 billion. To house all his art collections, he purchased the Palazzo Grassi SpA, Venice, and the Punta della Dogana, Venice. In collaboration with the city of Paris, renovations for the Bourse de commerce Centre of Paris, an open-air art theatre are ongoing under Tadao Ando, a renowned architect. The project which started in 2016 is set to reopen by the spring of 2020.

The Pinault family has also participated in philanthropic and humanitarian acts one of which is the rebuilding of the 800-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral which experienced a terrible fire breakout earlier this year. To support the rebuilding of the cathedral, the Pinault family donated $113 million (€100 million). With respect to another previous fire outbreak in the Paimpont forest, Brittany which happened in 1990, Pinault provided the community with huge financial support especially the areas greatly affected by the oil spill.

Awards

●     Military Value Cross – 1958

●     Breton of the Year (Armor Magazine) – 2006

●     Most influential personality in the art world (Art Review Magazine) – 2006/07

●     Grand Officier de la Legion d’honneur – 2011

●     Grand Officer of the Ordine della Stella d’Italia – 2016

●     Grand Croix de la Legion d’honneur – 2017