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 one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...

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 Desmarais Sr. (January 4, 1927 – October 8, 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 fou ...

. Pargesa took over the Belgian holding company

Groupe Bruxelles Lambert Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL), is a Belgian holding company invested in various sectors within companies that can be considered marketleaders and in which it can play an active role as a professional shareholder over the long term. In the last ...

in 1982 and over the year added significant stakes in such wide-ranging Belgian companies as

Petrofina Petrofina was a Belgian oil company. It merged with 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 are now owned by De ...

, 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 The ING Group ( nl, ING Groep) is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, wholesale bankin ...

, Royale Belge to

AXA Axa S.A. (styled as ''AXA'' or GIG in the Middle East) is a French multinational insurance company. The head office is in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. It also provides investment management and other financial services. The Ax ...

, Tractebel to

Suez Suez ( ar, السويس '; ) is a seaport city (population of about 750,000 ) in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez (a branch of the Red Sea), near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boun ...

, Petrofina to

Total S.A. TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...

, and RTL to

Bertelsmann Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA () is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates, and is also active in the service sector and ...

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 * Gérald de Palmas * Gérald Leblanc Less frequently the French name a ...

. His second wife was Christine Hennuy, and they have had two children, Ségolène, and Charles-Albert, who died in 1999, in a car accident at the age of 19. In 1995, he received the title of

baron Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knig ...

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 business magnate, investor, and art collector. He is the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, the world's largest luxury ...

LVMH LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (), commonly known as LVMH, is a French holding multinational corporation and conglomerate specializing in luxury goods, headquartered in Paris. The company was formed in 1987 through the merger of fashion house ...

, of the

Château Cheval Blanc Château Cheval Blanc (French for "White Horse Castle"), is a wine producer in Saint-Émilion in the Bordeaux wine region of France. Its wine received the highest rank of Premier Grand Cru Classé (A) status in the Classification of Saint-Émi ...

winery near

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

. 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 (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...

External links

Albert Frère in the 2009 Forbes billionaires' list

A discreet dynamo.
''The Economist,'' 20 April 2006.

References

1926 births 2018 deaths Barons of Belgium Belgian billionaires Directors of LVMH Walloon people {{Belgium-business-bio-stub