A few days later, on Monday (April 24), the business that 74-year-old Bernard Arnault built became the first European company to touch $500 billion (£401 billion/€453.5 billion) in market value.

Quite what it says about Europe that its first home-grown corporation to attain this stature is not one of the oil or tech companies whose products have fuelled a massive expansion of global wealth, but an agglomeration of desirable brands on which society’s winners can spend some of this wealth while exhibiting their taste and success, is a topic for another day.

But frankly, LVMH’s 75 "distinguished Houses" produce so many of the things conventionally thought of as the best of France - Dom Pérignon Champagne, Christian Dior perfume, Louis Vuitton handbags - that staging a Summer Olympics in the country without LVMH’s active involvement seems almost unimaginable.

The deal is not done yet, however: Arnault was reported to have told the LVMH annual meeting that "a contract is under discussion, and as with all discussions, could wind up with a signature or not."

Nor, unless he has mellowed considerably since my days of covering the French business elite at around the turn of the millennium, would I expect him to be influenced by the sort of appeals to patriotism that might sway some corporate movers and shakers.

Over four decades since he plucked Dior from a struggling northern French textile manufacturer, Arnault - lean, a touch bushy-browed and somewhat aloof in his demeanour - has earned the right to be considered one of the world’s most astute dealmakers.

How many people, I wonder, when asked to name the world’s richest man or woman, would pipe up with the name of Bernard Arnault?

Precious few, I would think; far fewer than would plump for one of the Big Four US business/investment titans - Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

And yet there the Frenchman sits slap bang at the top of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly Arnault’s relatively discreet manner.

He does not shun publicity exactly, but he appears far less hungry for it than some other high-profile bosses.

Put it this way: I would be utterly amazed if an Arnault space-rocket blasted off any time soon.

What he did exude when I was accorded facetime in the late-1990s at his office near the Arc de Triomphe was an athlete-like sense of purpose.

That and relentless focus on the business logic underpinning the LVMH model.

This combined a rather un-French decentralisation - "We try to consider our chief executive of a brand as an entrepreneur owning his brand" - with economies of scale in areas such as raw materials purchasing and media buying.

Nowadays, the LVMH stable embraces media brands, such as Le Parisien, Les Echos and Radio Classique (Arnault is a fine pianist), as well as Cheval Blanc hotels and my favourite Paris department store, Le Bon Marché.

Snaring LVMH would, then, be a massive boost for a Paris 2024 sponsorship programme that has had to contend with tough economic times and the global health emergency of COVID-19, as well as the conflagration that ravaged Notre-Dame in 2019.

This cultural disaster triggered a near-instant avalanche of several hundred million euros’-worth of donations, including €200 million (£177 million/$220 million) from the Arnault family.

With not much more than a year to go, Paris 2024 has landed just five top-tier domestic sponsors - the banking group BPCE, retailer Carrefour, electricity utility EDF, mobile network operator Orange and the pharmaceutical business Sanofi; this compares with a total of seven signed up by London 2012, the last Summer Olympics held in Europe.

With over €100 million (£88.5 million/$110 million) likely to be required to secure a so-called Premium Partnership, Arnault’s LVMH would no doubt be rigorous about ensuring that it secured value for money from the sponsorship.

The sheer number of brands that it controls may facilitate this, especially as Arnault once told me he saw no need for a customer who buys, say, a Vuitton suitcase and a bottle of Dom Pérignon to know that the same group is behind them.

An interview published by the Financial Times in 2021, shortly after the opening of a new Cheval Blanc in the expensively redeveloped Samaritaine building in prime position in central Paris, alerted me, moreover, to how the innovative format of the Paris 2024 Olympic Opening Ceremony might suit Arnault very nicely.

At a certain moment, billionaire and interviewer check out a terrace with a 360-degree panorama of picture-postcard Paris landmarks.

Notes the journalist: "It also illustrates quite deftly the sweep of Arnault’s power. To the left is the Louis Vuitton headquarters…To the right is the Louvre…which has been hosting LV fashion shows amid its priceless relics since…2017. And across the river stand the charred remains of Notre-Dame…Just beside Notre-Dame…a giant advertising hoarding promotes the LVMH-owned Celine."

As spelt out yesterday, athletes of Olympic delegations are to parade in the July 2024 Opening Ceremony aboard a flotilla of 116 boats.

These boats "will meander along six kilometres on the Seine between the Austerlitz and the Iéna bridges."

This should take them, among many other places, within easy reach of the Cheval Blanc, close to Pont Neuf.

They have left it until quite late in the day, but I for one would be surprised if these sponsorship negotiations do not now bear fruit.