One afternoon in July, not long after being named the wealthiest man on the planet by Forbes, Bernard Arnault, the head of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury goods empire, took his place on a stage with a view of the Eiffel Tower before a packed crowd of French dignitaries and reporters.

In the front row sat four of his five adult children – the fifth was watching from New York, where he is an executive at Tiffany & Co. Their father had raised all of them since they could walk to one day run the LVMH conglomerate.