Albert, Baron Frère (4 February 1926 – 3 December 2018) was a Belgian
billionaire
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...
businessman.
Early life
Frère grew up as a son of a nail merchant and helped in the business since an early age. His father died when Frère was 17; Frère had to leave school and run the family business by himself.
Career
At the age of 30, he started investing in Belgian steel factories, and by the end of the 1970s he practically controlled the whole steel industry in the region of Charleroi. He foresaw the coming steel crisis of the late 1970s and sold his enterprises to the Belgian state after merging them with the competing steel firm Cockerill to create
Cockerill-Sambre
Cockerill-Sambre was a group of Belgian steel manufacturers headquartered in Seraing, on the river Meuse, and in Charleroi, on the river Sambre. The Cockerill-Sambre group was formed in 1981 by the merger of two Belgian steel groups – SA Cocke ...
.
Frère used the proceeds from this sale to build an investment empire around the Swiss holding company
Pargesa which he founded with the Canadian investor
Paul Desmarais
Paul Guy Desmarais Sr. (4 January 1927 – 8 October 2013) was a Canadian financier and philanthropist, based in Montreal. With an estimated family net worth of US$4.5 billion (as of March 2012), Desmarais was ranked by ''Forbes'' as the ...
. Pargesa took over the Belgian holding company
Groupe Bruxelles Lambert
Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL) is a Belgian holding company invested in multiple industries. It invests in both listed and private companies. Directed by Ian Gallienne, GBL had a net asset value of €22.5 billion and a market capitalisation of â ...
in 1982 and over the year added significant stakes in such wide-ranging Belgian companies as
Petrofina
Petrofina was a Belgium, Belgian oil company. It merged with Total S.A., Total in 1999 to form TotalFina, which after subsequent mergers has changed its name back to Total. In the United States, Fina's former refining and marketing operations ...
, Royale Belge Insurance,
Compagnie Luxembourgoise de Télédiffusion (CLT), and Tractebel. He actively promoted international consolidation of the sectors in which he was involved, selling Banque Bruxelles Lambert to
ING Group
ING Group N.V. () is a Dutch multinational corporation, multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, whol ...
, Royale Belge to
AXA
Axa S.A. is a French multinational insurance corporation headquartered in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. It also provides investment management and other financial services via its subsidiaries. As of 2024, it is the fourth largest financi ...
, Tractebel to
Suez
Suez (, , , ) is a Port#Seaport, seaport city with a population of about 800,000 in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal. It is the capital and largest c ...
, Petrofina to
Total S.A.
TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and is one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas explorat ...
, and RTL to
Bertelsmann
The Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Bertelsmann (), is a German privately held company, private multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, ...
.
Personal life
Frère was married and had three children.
[ His first wife was Nelly Depoplimont, and they had a son, ]Gérald Gérald is a French male given name, a variant of the old Géraud and more common Gérard, both equivalent to Gerald in English.
People with the name include:
* Gérald Mossé, French jockey
* Gérald de Palmas, French recording artist and singer
* ...
.baron
Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often Hereditary title, hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than ...
from the Belgian king Albert II. He was a co-owner, together with Bernard Arnault
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault (; born 5 March 1949) is a French businessman, investor, and art collector. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. Arnault is one of the richest individuals in the ...
of LVMH
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE (), commonly known as LVMH, is a French multinational holding company and conglomerate that specializes in luxury goods and has its headquarters in Paris, France. The company was formed in 1987 through the ...
, of the Château Cheval Blanc winery near Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...
. He was a member of the Cercle Gaulois.
Overview over Albert Frère's shareholdings as of May 2009
Honours
2014 : Knight Grand Cross in the Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...
.
External links
Albert Frère in the 2009 Forbes billionaires' list
A discreet dynamo.
''The Economist,'' 20 April 2006.
References
1926 births
2018 deaths
Belgian barons
Belgian billionaires
Directors of LVMH
Walloon people
{{Belgium-business-bio-stub