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 one of 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 it tremendously. 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 Charles Edelstenne and Bernard Charles became the PLM solutions' world leader thanks to complementary suite of applications as Catia, Enovia, Delmia and Solidworks.

Serge Dassault studied at the École polytechnique and Supaéro. During the second world war, he has been put in jail as his father was sent in Buchenwald for having refused to cooperate 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 probationary in the Belgian Agusta scandal. He also had to pay a fine of 60,000 Belgian francs (about €1,500).

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