After 30 years of television, Arthur is much more than the troop host we know. The businessman also had a considerable fortune.
He celebrated his 30 years of career recently, with a program to his glory and some controversy quickly swept away. Arthur continues to chain emblematic shows on French television, with great success and rare failures, TV children has Friday everything is allowed. If the French know the tidy and funny animator, little know that Jacques Essebag – his real name – is also a businessman as wise as they are formidable.
Arthur is even one of the 500 largest fortunes in France according to the magazine Challengeswhich makes it the prestigious list each year. In the last delivery of the magazine last summer, Jacques Essebag had certainly lost 11 places in the list, but it was still in the 228th position. Far from a Bernard Arnault (more than 190 billion euros), but at the top of audiovisual personalities. A place that this son of a chartered accountant and a housewife from Morocco at the end of the 1960s, reached a hard work and an incredible business sense.
Arthur had several production companies, but it was by creating Asp Productions with Stéphane Courbit, in the 90s, that he really embarked on the profession. The company produces TV children, But in 2001, first stroke of genius: ASP merged with the Dutch group Endemol which bought it. Arthur then becomes vice-president of Endemol France and a clause is to its advantage. The contract provides that the final sale price of ASP productions is indexed to the results of Endemol in France.
Now this is the moment when Endemol France is experiencing a gigantic success with the advent of reality TV and programs like Loft story. When Arthur goes to sell his shares of Endemol France, he manages to tear from the parent company, the Spaniard Telefonica, hundreds of millions of euros, an amount remained confidential (we speak of 200 million or more). Coming from radio and now installed on television, Arthur has come a long way.
The host will have other ideas to make his fortune grow: takeover of the radio Oüi FM, creation of the holding arthur world participation Group (which he will exile in Luxembourg several years later), of satisfaction Group, new production group which will become the independent French leader, buy in 2018 of Sony Pictures Television France and its catalog (the two were merged into the group “satisfy” 2020), Opening internationally … Companies are linked: Vendome Investments, Serenity Fiction (films), Alef One (series), Five Stars Publishing (music).
Another nice blow among others, Arthur resells in 2015 its actions in the company Coyote, specializing in radar warnings, with a more values of 12 million euros.
As a result, its jackpot would amount to 600 million euros today depending on the assessment of challenges. With satisfaction (satisfy), Arthur is 59 years old at the head of a flourishing group of 150 employees and a “cash machine” wrote The informed in December 2024. His goal, as he indicated to Challenges : reach 100 million euros in turnover by the end of 2026.