Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates edged to 3rd richest person in the World by rising Bernard Arnault, numbers here

In seven-year history of Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Bill Gates has never ranked lower than . 2, until recently when Microsoft co-founder dropped to . 3 behind France's Bernard Arnault.

Arnault's luxury-goods maker, LVMH ( Louis Vuitton SE), vanced to a record stock price and pushed his net worth to $107.6 billion and ahe of Gates by more than $200 million. Arnault has ded $39 billion to his fortune in 2019 alone, biggest individual gain by far among 500 people in Bloomberg’s ranking.

70-year old joined Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, world's richest person, in most exclusive wealth club last month, when his fortune surpassed $100 billion for first time. three giants' collective wealth exceeds individual market values of almost every company in S&P 500 Index, including Walmart Inc., Exxon Mobil Corporation and Walt Disney Co. 

This year has been particularly good to French tycoons, with Arnault, Kering SA’s Francois Pinault and cosmetics heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyers racking up a combined $57 billion.

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Arnault and his family are among luxury titans who pledged more than $650 million in April for reconstruction of tre Dame Cadral after a fire ravd landmark church. He controls about half of Paris-based LVMH through a family holding company and also owns a 97% stake in Christian Dior, fashion house founded three years before his birth in 1949.

Arnault entered luxury-goods market in 1984 by acquiring a textile group that owned Christian Dior. Four years later, he sold company’s or businesses and used proceeds to buy a controlling stake in LVMH. His art collection of modern and contemporary paintings includes pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Maurizio Cattelan, Andy Warhol, and Pablo Picasso.

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If it wasn't for Gates' benevolent giving, he’d still be world’s richest person. Gates has donated more than $35 billion to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bezos’s net worth is up slightly this year to $125 billion, even after reaching a divorce settlement with MacKenzie Bezos that me her world’s fourth-richest woman.