Marcel Boussac, France's richest man in 1951 and Dior's backer, died ruined; his collapsed group became Bernard Arnault's start

Marcel Boussac built France's largest cotton group from 1911^†. In 1951 he was ranked France's richest man, with more than 50 factories and 20,000 workers^†. In 1946 he financed Christian Dior's new couture house. His stable won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe six times, and he was France's leading owner 19 times. He ran the group as a family company whose accounts only he understood^†. Losses reached 100 million francs in 1977^†. On 30 May 1978 the group's 21 main companies were placed in court-supervised settlement. On 18 August 1978 the Paris commercial court accepted a 700 million franc offer from Saint Frères, part of the Willot brothers' Agache-Willot group^†. Boussac died in March 1980, aged 90, a bankrupt man, and was buried in Montmartre cemetery^†. Boussac-Saint-Frères filed for bankruptcy on 26 June 1981^†. In December 1984 Bernard Arnault, aged 35, took control through Financière Agache with Lazard's backing and state aid tied to keeping the group whole^†. Fortune reports he then cut 9,000 jobs, sold Conforama and the other businesses, and kept Dior and Le Bon Marché. By 1987 the company earned $112 million on $1.9 billion of revenue. In 1989 Arnault became chairman of LVMH. In October 2026 Forbes put his fortune at $117.9 billion.