Claude Perdriel (born 25 October 1926) is owner-manager of the Perdriel Group that publishes Sciences et Avenir, Challenges, Rue89 and during 1970–1980, the Paris daily Le Matin de Paris. It also published Le Nouvel Observateur from its foundation in 1964 to 2014 when it was sold to a group of investors that already published Le Monde.
Pierre Jacques Louis Fabre (16 April 1926 – 20 July 2013) was a French pharmaceutical and cosmetics executive and pharmacist, who founded Laboratoires Pierre Fabre in 1962. Fabre, a rugby enthusiast, was also the owner of Castres Olympique, a French rugby union club based in the city of Castres.Fabre founded Laboratoires Pierre Fabre, a major multinational pharmaceutical and cosmetics company headquartered in Castres, in 1962. The company grossed 1.972 billion euros in revenue in 2012. It employs approximately 10,000 people, with 6,700 of those jobs based in France. The success of the company placed Fabre as France's 43rd richest man at the time of his death in 2013.Fabre died in his home in Lavaur, Tarn department, on 20 July 2013, at the age of 87. The French employers' organisation, Mouvement des Entreprises de France, called his death "a huge loss." Castres Olympique's stadium was renamed as Stade Pierre-Fabre in memory of Fabre in 2017.
Marcel Boussac (17 April 1889 – 21 March 1980) was a French entrepreneur best known for his ownership of the Maison Dior and one of the most successful thoroughbred race horse breeding farms in European history.
Born in Châteauroux, Indre, France, Boussac made a fortune in textile manufacturing. In 1911 he acquired the Château de Mivoisin, a 36 square kilometre property located 1½ hours south of Paris in Dammarie-sur-Loing, Loiret.
In 1941, Boussac was made a member of the National Council of Vichy France.
In 1946, he financed Christian Dior's new Paris fashion house that became one of the most famous clothing and perfume marques. In 1951 Boussac expanded into the newspaper business with the acquisition of L'Aurore.
An avid horseman, Marcel Boussac acquired the Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard horse breeding farm in Neuvy-au-Houlme in Lower Normandy and the Haras de Jardy in Marnes-la-Coquette. As part of his breeding operation, Boussac bought and sold horses from across Europe plus from the United States. He acquired the U.S. Triple Crown winner Whirlaway and sold the mare La Troienne to Edward R. Bradley's Idle Hour Stock Farm in Lexington, Kentucky who became one of the most influential mares to be imported into the U.S. in the 20th century.
Boussac's horses, carrying Boussac's signature orange silk and grey cap, dominated French horse racing from the 1930s through to the 1960s making his stable the leading money winner fourteen times and the leading breeder on seventeen occasions. In addition to being a six-time winner of France's most important race, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, Boussac's horses also won the prestigious Epsom Derby, Epsom Oaks, 2,000 Guineas, St. Leger Stakes, Ascot Gold Cup and others in the United Kingdom.
With the Fall of France in the Second World War, Boussac paid a British Royal Air Force officer on secret business to fly him from Paris to the UK. This caused the officer Sidney Cotton to be removed from his position. During the German occupation of France in World War II, the Nazis seized some of the best racehorses in the country. They shipped more than six hundred of them out of the country, some to Hungary but most back to Germany for racing or for breeding at the German National Stud. Among them was the champion Pharis, owned by Marcel Boussac.
He was married for many years to the Belgian opera singer Fanny Heldy. They are buried together in the Cimetière de Montmartre in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.
On his death in 1980, Boussac's estate was liquidated and L'Aurore sold to Robert Hersant who merged it with his Le Figaro newspaper. The property itself would eventually be acquired by Stavros Niarchos. The Aga Khan IV had purchased the bulk of the Boussac farm's breeding stock in 1978 when Boussac's companies were declared bankrupt.In his honor, the Prix Marcel Boussac, a Group One Stakes Race, is run annually at the Longchamp Racecourse.
François Coty (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa kɔti]; born Joseph Marie François Spoturno, [ʒɔzɛf maʁi fʁɑ̃swa spɔtuʁno]; 3 May 1874 – 25 July 1934) was a French perfumer, businessman, newspaper publisher, politician and patron of the arts. He was the founder of the Coty perfume company, today a multinational. He is considered the founding father of the modern perfume industry.
In 1904, his first success, fragrance La Rose Jacqueminot launched his career. He soon started exporting perfumes from France, and by 1910 he had subsidiaries in Moscow, London and New York. During the 1917 Russian Revolution, his assets in Moscow, which consisted of stocks and funds were confiscated by the Soviet government, making him a lifelong enemy of Communism.
By the end of World War I, his financial success made him one of the richest men in France, allowing him to act as patron of the arts, collect works of art, historic homes and seek to play a political role.
In 1922, he gained control of daily newspaper Le Figaro. To check the growth of socialism and Communism in France, he founded two other daily papers in 1928.
In 1923 he was elected senator of Corsica, and was mayor of Ajaccio from 1931 to 1934.
Fearing the spread of communism, he subsidized various right-wing movements. In 1933, faced with a political class that he considered incapable, he published a reform of the State and founded his own movement Solidarité française, which became more radical after his death.
At the time of his death, at age 60, his fortune was greatly diminished as a result of his divorce, the high cost of running his press empire and the repercussions of the economic crisis of 1929.
Émilien Amaury (French pronunciation: [emiljɛ̃ amoʁi]; 5 March 1909, in Étampes, France – 2 January 1977, in Chantilly) was a French publishing magnate whose company now organises the Tour de France. He worked with Philippe Pétain, head of the French government in the southern half of France during the second world war but used his position to find paper and other materials for the French Resistance. His links with Jacques Goddet, the organiser of the Tour de France, led to a publishing empire that included the daily sports paper, L'Équipe. Amaury died after falling from his horse; his will led to six years of legal debate.