Kerr Neilson is chuckling as he recounts a story about the audacity of Bernard Arnault. The richest man in Europe and chairman of the luxury goods behemoth LVMH, Arnault last November obtained a prize he had long lusted after, America’s fabled jeweller Tiffany & Co.

Less than four months later, Arnault ingeniously raised the money for the $US16.2 billion ($25 billion) transaction in the bond market. Thanks to the European Central Bank’s aggressive policy stance intended to keep finance costs low, some of the bonds were priced at negative yields, meaning the market was paying LVMH for the privilege of lending it money to sell engagement rings and charm bracelets. The ECB even ended up owning tranches of LVMH debt, a marker of the topsy-turvy world in which we now live.