A French Billionaire's Plea in a Nepo-Baby World

We live in a nepo-baby world. New billionaires are accumulating more wealth through inheritance than entrepreneurship. For the first time in 15 years, there are no self-made billionaires under the age of 30. And increased outrage at what goes on among the billionaire crowd — or the top 0.00003% — seems to reflect what’s happening further down the ladder after a decade of asset-price gains and weak upward mobility. Almost two out of three millennials say their retirement security depends on how much they inherit.

Hence why French billionaire Xavier Niel’s new book of interviews about his journey from disruptive anti-establishment outsider to holder of a $10.3 billion fortune makes for fascinating, if unsettling, reading. His story is a very non-nepo one, more in keeping with the US tech billionaires he name-checks throughout. After hacking pay-TV boxes as a teenager and promoting adult services on France’s internet precursor Minitel — “school just wasn’t my thing,” he says — Niel rolled his tanks onto the telecom establishment’s lawn with a low-cost all-in-one broadband, phone and TV service that made him rich but also earned him the ire of wealthy incumbents. His brief spell in prison, in connection with income made from peep shows, didn’t help endear him to the establishment.