Obituary

L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt dies at 94

Liliane Bettencourt, the heiress to the L’Oreal cosmetics fortune and the world’s richest woman, has died at home in Paris, aged 94.

Bettencourt, whose net worth was estimated at $39.5 billion, was the daughter of Eugène Schueller, who made a fortune as the inventor of modern hair dye and founder of L’Oreal.

Bettencourt was said to have adored her father, whose company she inherited on his death in 1957, her mother having died when she was five.

David Rockefeller, the international financier, philanthropist and third-generation member of the American Rockefeller oil dynasty, has died aged 101.

He was the oldest living member of the Rockefeller family and was the family patriarch from July 2004 until he died of heart failure at his home in Pocantico Hills, New York, on 20 March. Forbes estimated his net worth to be about $3.3 billion, mostly in family trusts his father established.

Milky Ways, Snickers, M&Ms, Whiskas, and Pedigree are known around the world but the man credited with that global expansion was a mystery, and that was just the way he liked it.

“Privacy at times today seems a relic of the non-media past,” Forrest E Mars Jr told Duke University business majors. It “allows us to do the very best we can… without being concerned with self-aggrandisement.”

Edgar de Picciotto was a pioneer to hedge fund investors, “the smartest man in Europe” to his disciples, and the patriarch of a dynasty that upholds his legacy of astute, innovative, and independent wealth management.

De Picciotto founded Geneva-based Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) in 1969 and turned it into one of the world’s biggest family-owned banks.