Polytechnique

"Is it by calculation, to test the determination of his son, or sincerely, to get rid of him, that Jean Arnault gives this instruction to Hugues Motte, his technical director, while Bernard, fresh out of Polytechnique, takes his first steps at Ferret Savinel? Does he secretly fear being marginalized by his own son who benefits from the blind support of his stepmother, that is to say, the main shareholder?"

"To carry out this strategy, at the very moment when François Pinault came to trample his garden, he created Europ@ web, a holding company, also of Dutch law, responsible for overseeing most of the group's European internet activities, which he entrusted to Chahram Becharat, thirty-two years old, a precision intellectual mechanic trained at Polytechnique and Harvard, recruited a little earlier. He surrounded himself with about fifty young wolves who left their consulting firms and investment banks without looking back, trading their comfortable salaries for promises of capital gains. With a fund of 500 million euros (3.28 billion francs), Europ@ web will acquire about fifty "dotcoms". The methods are those that financial power allows in the face of excited and naive kids."

"Bernard Arnault, after a brilliant academic career, succeeded in the competitive entrance exam for the Ecole des Mines but narrowly missed Polytechnique due to a fracture that handicapped him during the entrance exam."

"This result would nevertheless suffice for the happiness of his father who is himself a graduate of Ecole Centrale... but this does not satisfy Bernard's ambition who wants to enter Polytechnique, which he succeeds in the following year. Such is his determination... After Polytechnique, he enters the family business in which he immediately makes his mark."