Ten years from the onset of the global financial crisis, global wealth has grown by 27%, according to Credit Suisse Research Institute’s 2017 Global Wealth Report.
The world’s richest people have seen their share of the globe’s total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140tn, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report published on Tuesday.
Luxury goods maker Hermes said Wednesday that sales had accelerated during the third quarter across all its major markets and notably in its two biggest regions of Europe and Asia.
Hermes said revenues were up by 6.4 percent at €1.337 billion ($1.5 billion) in the period from July to September. The result was ahead of analysts’ average expectations of an about 8.5% revenues increase, as demand for the group’s scarves, bags and clothes accelerated since the previous quarter when sales rose 8.3%.
The seven-floor home, located at the St. Moritz ski resort in Switzerland, was "designed to make a billionaire’s jaw drop," listing agent Senada Adzem of Douglas Elliman Real Estate told "Secret Lives of the Super Rich."
And within the resort sits the most expensive house for sale in the country, on the market for $185 million. As featured on a recent episode of CNBC’s "Secret Lives of the Super Rich," the lavish home includes everything from a hidden library to an underground lake.
Luxury goods maker Richemont expects first-half net profit to rise by more than two-thirds, partly benefiting from the nonrecurrence of exceptional items.
Swiss watchmakers are recovering from a severe downturn in demand, mainly due to a collapse of the Hong Kong market that had prompted the world’s second-biggest luxury group to buy back excess inventory of unsold watches and cut jobs and replace almost all its brand chiefs.
Gucci has banned the use of fur. The Kering-owned megabrand says the ban with take effect with its Spring/Summer 2018 collections and it has signed up to the Fur Free Alliance, an organisation that promises to end exploitation and killing of animals for fur, as part of a wider sustainability plan.
“Do you think using furs today is still modern? I don’t think it’s still modern and that’s the reason why we decided not to do that. It’s a little bit out-dated,” chief executive and president Marco Bizzarri told BoF ahead of a speech in London outlining the move. “Creativity can jump in many different directions instead of using furs.”
LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury goods company, reported higher-than-expected revenue growth for the third quarter on Monday, setting a high bar for peers after strong sales at its fashion brands.
LVMH, home to labels like Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Moet & Chandon champagne, said like-for-like revenues, which strip out currency swings and acquisitions or disposals, grew 12 percent from a year earlier to €30.1 billion ($35.4 billion).
That beat the 9 percent organic growth forecast in an analyst poll compiled for Reuters by Inquiry Financial and was stable from the previous quarter, in spite of a weaker showing by LVMH’s spirits unit and a tricky foreign exchange climate.
Following a couple of weeks of public uproar after the French government said it was going to scrap a wealth tax that applies to personal assets of more than $1.5 million, Emmanuel Macron’s administration will propose a tax on luxury yachts, supercars and precious metals in France’s 2018 budget.
Macron, a former Rothschild banker, has been trying to shake off the label of “president of the rich,” but the September proposal of replacing the tax on high-end assets such as jewellery with just a real estate tax didn’t help his cause.
The Swiss luxury giant Richemont has opened a research and innovation center in Microcity, Switzerland’s well-known think tank and laboratory.
The Richemont’s group research and innovation director, Edouard Mignon, said the partnership was intended to supplement the research and development teams of the brands, promote sharing among companies, “and serve as an innovation incubator for the group as a whole, to develop mechanical specialties and, for example, to imagine new materials.”
