New Delhi, July 18 -- One multibillionaire in second place, or third, on a list of the few whose dollar net-worth runs into 12 digits, should make little difference to the rest of the world. Yet, such lists can be barometers of business performance, in particular, and social behaviour in general. France's Bernard Arnault, CEO of luxury products group LVMH-derived from Louis Vuitton-Moet Hennessy-has displaced Microsoft's Bill Gates on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the world's second-richest man, just a month after he entered the rarefied $100 billion club. LVMH shares have made record gains this week on the back of a 16% revenue growth in the first quarter of 2019 over the same period last year, pushing Arnault's personal wealth to nearly $108 billion. Gates is worth $107 billion on the chart. When one thinks of the world's richest, one usually thinks of technology successes. That the creator of a luxury empire could get richer than the founder of a software major speaks of value generation of a far fuzzier kind-enabled by a world increasingly devoted to wealth and its symbols. Luxury is a market where anything that signals membership of a global elite commands an eye-popping premium....