A jackpot of 1,128 billion: the 500 richest French people have seen their fortunes multiply by 14 in 3 decades

Where to find 40 billion euros, asks François Bayrou. Among all the possible avenues, we can suggest to the Prime Minister to leaf through the latest issue of Challenges . The magazine published on Thursday, July 10, its traditional ranking of the 500 largest fortunes in France . From the first pages, we learn that since the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017, the number of millionaires in France has risen from 2 million to 2.9 million, making the country "the world champion of millionaires," the magazine headlines. It's a shame that the weekly doesn't put this figure in relation to the even more record number of poor people, which is approaching 10 million in France in 2023, an increase of 650,000 over one year...

A few pages later, we finally arrive at the ranking, and the very good idea of ​​this 2025 vintage is to have systematically put its data into perspective with those of 1996. The result is edifying, it's simple, it looks like a report written by Oxfam , the NGO which claims to "mobilize citizen power against poverty" . " In 1996, there were 16 billionaires, today there are 145. Having gone from 80 to 1,128 billion euros, the total wealth of the "500" has skyrocketed, multiplied by 14" , calculated the weekly.

And if we just take the top 10, their fortune has multiplied by 24 over the period . A little less than 30 years ago, the fortune of the ultra-rich represented 6% of GDP. It was 42% in 2024. In 1996, the richest family in France was the Mulliez (the Auchan empire) with 5.5 billion euros of assets , when Bernard Arnault peaked at 203 billion in 2023, a decrease in debt year, leaving the first place on the podium to the Hermès family, at the head of 163.4 billion euros. Cécile Duflot, director of Oxfam France, tempered the reversal of fortune of the LVMH group and its boss: "If we took away 99% of his fortune, Bernard Arnault would still be a billionaire."

Challenge makes it clear that the wealth of the members of its ranking is "professional." It resides in the ownership of holding companies, which themselves hold shares in companies. Challenge points out that, through several family businesses (notably Agache), the Arnaults own 48% of LVMH , which constitutes the bulk of their wealth.

According to the Capital Tax Reform Committee, these so-called "professional" assets represent at least 66% of the wealth of the 380 richest households . However, these assets are not taxed – nor were they subject to the ISF (wealth tax) – since they do not constitute "income" as defined by the tax authorities. Thus, the Arnault family paid themselves €3.1 billion in dividends last year, which will not be taxed since they are kept in holding companies and Europe has banned any taxation between parent and subsidiary companies (which is not the case in the United States).

"This allows, for example, billionaires to finance their lifestyle with bank loans, so still without income, just with the guarantees allowed by their financial assets, it is one of the many techniques that holding companies allow to avoid tax," explained Layla Yakoub, head of tax justice and inequality advocacy at Oxfam. This was the whole point of the Zucman tax , rejected last month in the Senate: its base includes professional assets.

Taxing professional assets appears all the more urgent since it has been confirmed, following a Senate inquiry report, that state aid in all its forms to businesses cost 211 billion euros in 2023. " We have moved from a welfare state, at the end of the Second World War, with Social Security, retirement... to a welfare state for large companies, " explains Maxime Combes.

" For every problem they encounter, they demand aid: the election of Trump, a war in Ukraine, a climate hazard, the need to decarbonize... They take the money and oppose any conditionality and control, and in return they believe that they owe nothing to the community, " laments the economist, co-author of the book Un Pognon de Dingue, mais pour qui? (A Crazy Money, But for Whom? ).