Bernard Arnault overtakes Bill Gates as world's second-richest person

This year has been particularly good to French tycoons, with Arnault, Kering SA's Francois Pinault and cosmetics heir Francoise Bettencourt Meyers tacking on a combined $57 billion

Bill Gates has never ranked lower than No. 2 in the seven-year history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That run ended Tuesday when the Microsoft Corp. co-founder dropped to No. 3 behind France’s Bernard Arnault.

LVMH, Arnault’s luxury-goods maker, advanced to a record Tuesday and pushed his net worth to $107.6 billion and ahead of Gates by more than $200 million. The shares extended their gains Wednesday, rising 0.7% at 1:54 p.m. in Paris. Arnault has added about $39 billion to his fortune in 2019 alone, the biggest individual gain by far among the 500 people in Bloomberg’s ranking.

Arnault, 70, joined