Housing demand rebounded, driven by 20-year mortgage rates of about 4 per cent and government-subsidised interest-free loans for some first- time buyers. By the end of 2010, Cogedim's portion of French home sales had doubled, to 5.3 per cent, since the takeover.
Taravella's €760,000 investment to start Altarea in 1994 has repaid him more than 900-fold.
Since Altarea first became publicly traded in late 2004, its shareholders earned annual returns of 25 per cent from dividends and stock appreciation.
Taravella was at his best in turning his company around, says Christophe Kullmann, head of Metz, France-based office landlord Fonciere des Region, which owns 12 per cent of Altarea.
"He is the complete package: a financial expert, a real-estate man, a good manager and, above all, a formidable negotiator," he says.
Taravella grew up in Normandy and won one of the 246 places at Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris, France's top business school, in 1968. Five out of six students that year were from Paris and its environs, including former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Taravella honed his real-estate skills while working with Pierre & Vacances chairman Gerard Bremond. For 19 years, Taravella helped turn the small business that built chalets at a ski resort into a €490 million company that now runs 51,000 holiday homes across Europe.
Still, Taravella wanted more.
"My goal was always to create a company," he says. Altarea, a name shortened from Alain Taravella Real Estate, plunged into retail properties, an area other companies were abandoning after France froze construction of out-of-town shopping centres to protect small businesses.
Taravella positioned Altarea as a city-centre specialist. He opened Bercy Village in 2000, transforming Paris's former wine-storage district into a cobbled pedestrian precinct with shops and restaurants.
Taravella is now building a mall in the Paris suburb of Villeneuve-la-Garenne and developing retail parks in Limoges and Le Mans.
Investors say Taravella delegates responsibilities to the loyal team he has assembled, all of whom hold Altarea shares.
His sons, Matthieu, 33, and Gautier, 31, are board members.
- Bloomberg
Billions no big deal: mogul
Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor says he never wanted the world to know how rich he is.
"I don't see what the big deal is," says the Peruvian mogul, who amassed much of his $3 billion fortune by selling financial services in South America through his IFH Peru.
"It just happened, and my life hasn't changed that much."
Rodriguez-Pastor, 52, and the seven fellow billionaires Bloomberg reports on in its September cover package have kept low profiles.
Brazilian real-estate developer Rubens Menin Teixeira de Souza found his ticket to wealth in homes for his country's rising middle class.
Alain Taravella of France survived a slump and is building malls, offices, houses and apartments.
Most of these tycoons' fortunes crested the 10-figure mark in the past two years as the value of stakes in publicly held companies soared.
