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Pinault attended school at College Saint-Martin in Rennes, France. But his classmates bullied him over his rural accent and so he dropped out at 16 to start his first job at his father’s lumber business.
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Source: The Guardian, Bloomberg
In the early 1960s, Pinault borrowed 100,000 francs from his family and the bank to launch his first company, Les Établissements Francois Pinault, a timber trading firm. By the early ’70s, he started building an empire by buying up smaller timber firms.
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Source: The Guardian, Bloomberg
Beginning in the 1990s, Pinault looked beyond the lumber business. He acquired French department store Printemps — a controversial deal that put Pinault on the map — then added a vineyard to his portfolio with the acquisition of Chateau Latour, a winery in Bordeaux.
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Source: The Guardian, Bloomberg
In 1994, the company changed its name to Pinault Printemps Redoute, or PPR, after acquiring La Redoute, a French mail-order retailer.
Jacques Brinon/AP
Source: Bloomberg
In the mid-1990s, Pinault made a few unsuccessful bids to get into the financial services market. But by the end of the decade, he’d set his sights on luxury, first acquiring the auction house Christie’s for $1.2 billion, then snapping up a 42% stake in fashion house Gucci.
Reuters
Source: The Guardian, Bloomberg
But the acquisition of Gucci sparked a nearly two-and-a-half-year battle with fellow billionaire Bernard Arnault, CEO of rival luxury conglomerate LVMH, which also owned a stake in the company. At the time, The New York Times labeled the legal war “one of the most bitter fights in corporate history.” LVMH eventually sold its stake in Gucci to PPR for $2 billion.
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Source: The New York Times, Bloomberg
When the elder Pinault stepped down from the helm of PPR, he shifted his focus to his main passion: art. On top of his ownership of Christie’s, Pinault is regarded as one of the biggest private art collectors in the world.
Alexander Natruskin/Reuters
Source: Insider
