“He always told us that …”: François-Henri Pinault shares a council of his billionaire father, to “go faster” towards success

In 2024, François Pinault has come out of the classification of 100 richest people in the world. The founder of Kering has seen his son for some time try to straighten the largest brand of their French luxury conglomerate, Gucci. Because in the Pinault family, the takeover of the youngest son, François-Henri, was done gradually, and of course according to the will of François Father. Because it was on him that his choice has been made and this since the adolescence of the cadet. Completion and clear eyes of Bretons, François-Henri is the almost double of his paternal. He insisted that his three children (he is also the father of Laurence and Benjamin) are not “rich kids”, François Pinault is for his part son of peasants. If is one of the only major French industrial patterns to have been involved in the education of his children, this is not really the case with Pinault. At the divorce of their mother, Louisette Gautier, he will let them live at her house, in Rennes, welcoming them every other weekend. But as reported by Raphaëlle Bacqué and Vanessa Schneider, great reporters to Mondeonly his ascent concerns him, and on Saturday morning, François-Henri then still very young is condemned to follow his father in his office, and get bored there.

Et This auto -dictate father will then have a single obsessionreveals the book of journalists, Successions (Albin Michel editions). That his children do not do like him, namely not to follow studies. It is due to what they go to grandes écoles. Because for François Pinault, this is of great regret. According to him, it would have changed a lot in his life. And when the one who is now 17 years old, his father finally begins to put pressure on his academic success, as well as that of his brother and sister. “”He always told us that studies were important, specifies François-Henri, his worthy heir, that if he had done it, he would have gone faster. “But François-Henri Pinault nevertheless sees things differently. He who joined his father in Paris, where he entered the Lycée délite Privé Stanislas, before joining a preparatory class of business school, wishes everything Stop. “One day he came to see me in my office avenue de Messine with a brochure ‘How to become an accountant in two years”, recalls the father. He wanted to stop, he had a moment of discouragement. I said to him: ‘Go home to work, you continue’.“ No question for the founder of the Artémis group to see his children walk in his steps, he who left school at 16 years old. If the 88 year old man also exasperates from these “young fresh people enmonus from the grandes écoles who do not have, like him, this sense almost instinctive of commerce“he knows on the other hand better than anyone “barriers drawn up in front of the self -taught“.

What course François-Henri Pinault followed before joining Kering?

François-Henri Pinault ended up listening to his father and landing HEC in 1985. Which will be the pride of the paternal. And while Laurence and Dominique embark on law studies, the youngest then becomes the only one to train in the business world. “”After HEC, he went to do his military service to the French consulate in Los Angeles, and he no longer wanted to leave, continues his father. I went to see him and I said to him: ‘Come back, you will succeed me one day, I will give you the keys’.“The heir will eventually yield and enter the Pinault SA group in 1987.