Serge Dassault

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Serge Dassault (born 4 April 1925) is a French entrepreneur and conservative politician. According to Forbes magazine, as of 2006 he was the 56th richest person in the world.

He is the son of Marcel Dassault, from whom he inherited the Dassault Group. During the last 20 years, he developed the company and, thanks to his management and the help of Charles Edelstenne, Dassault Aviation is now the world leader of the higher range of the business jet market with the Falcon jet family and is one of the few European companies able to develop and manufacture fighter jets (Mirage and Rafale). Meanwhile, Dassault Systems run by Edelstenne and Bernard Charles has become the PLM solutions' world leader due to a complementary suite of applications such as Catia, Enovia, Delmia and Solidworks.

Serge Dassault studied at the École polytechnique and Supaéro. During the Second World War, he was put in jail while his father was sent in Buchenwald for refusing to co-operate with the Germans in the airplane industry.

As a diversification, his group owns also 82% of Socpresse, which controls many important French newspapers and magazines, including Le Figaro, and L'Express.

He is a member of the political party the Union for a Popular Movement, as is his son Olivier, who is a deputy to the French National Assembly. He is the mayor of the city of Corbeil-Essonnes, a southern suburb of Paris. In 2004, Serge Dassault helped finance the 200 million euro Islamic cultural center (essentially, a mosque) in his city of Corbeil-Essonnes out of his funds.

In December 1998, Dassault was sentenced to 2 years probation in the Belgian Agusta scandal and was fined 60,000 Belgian francs (about €1,500).

In 2004, Serge Dassault became a senator and in this position, he has been an outspoken advocate of conservative positions on economic and employment issues, claiming that France's taxes and workforce regulations ruin its entrepreneurs.