France’s 10 wealthiest people worth more than entire Greek GDP

The net worth of the 10 richest people in France totals to 194.4 billion euros ($214.4 billion), an amount that exceeds Greece’s 2014 gross domestic product (GDP), which stood at 179.81 billion euros ($197.6 billion), Challenges financial magazine published on Thursday.

First on the list was Bernard Arnault and family, who control the luxury goods group LVMH (Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Givenchy, Kenzo, Guerlain, Bulgari, among others), coming in with 34.7 billion euros ($38.2 billion).

After Arnault is the heir to the L’Oreal cosmetics empire, Liliane Bettencourt, whose net worth amounts to 30.9 billion euros ($34.1 billion), followed by business tycoon Axel Dumas, head of the luxury group Hermes, with an estimated capital of 24.1 billion euros ($26.5 billion).

Xavier Niel, the brain leading the Iliad group, which in the last 15 years has revolutionized the telecommunications industry in France, was last on France’s multibillionaire list.

The total wealth of the top 500 fortunes in France adds up to 460 billion euros ($507.6 billion) in assets, 10 times higher than that accumulated in 1996, when Challenges published its first index.