David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Right. It's not that crazy that there are not a lot of suitors for this thing because even if Dior was independent, without the right person running it, it's not that attractive of an asset. Right, and it's buried under all of this awfulness. There were 20,000 textile employees. They're unionized. The company is losing tons and tons of money. This is a bad situation. It may be a diamond buried in there, but it's buried way deep. Enter one Bernard Jean Etienne Arnault. As we said, Bernard was born in 1949 in Roubaix. Remember, 1949, this is two years after Dior had launched the new look. Supposedly his mother, Marie, had a total fascination for Dior. This is the legend that Bernard tells. It always stuck with him. I assume his mom owned pieces of Dior. How did she afford that? His dad and Bernard's family on his dad's side are entrepreneurs. They're not just entrepreneurs, they're engineers and entrepreneurs. His dad, Jean, ran a company called Ferret-Savinel, which was a quite successful civil engineering and public works construction firm in the north of France. They employed about 1000 people. It was started by Bernard's grandfather after World War I to rebuild a lot of the infrastructure in the north of France. The family all lives close together. His grandparents live right across the street in Roubaix. Bernard is totally taken under the wing of his grandfather and grandmother, absorbs tons of lessons. When his grandfather passes away, I think Bernard's 10 or so at this point in time. He actually goes and lives with his grandmother across the street. Bernard's growing up steeped in running this engineering family business. He ends up going for college to the very prestigious École Polytechnique. The French educational system is unique. It's one of the grande école. It's probably the most selective and famous grande école within France. It's like the MIT or the Caltech of France. With the prestige of Harvard. Engineering is the most difficult and prestigious thing to study at any of these schools.…

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