Larger-than-life French business mogul Bernard Tapie, who died on Sunday aged 78, was a symbol of the best and worst of high-rolling free market capitalism, reports FRANCE 24.
His swashbuckling career spanned business, sports, politics and the arts, but also scandal and prison.
Tapie, who revealed in 2017 that he had cancer of the stomach and oesophagus, made a vast fortune, lost it and then made it back again, only to end his life broke following a scandal which embroiled Christine Lagarde, now head of the European Central Bank.
"If there is one thing I know how to do, it is making dough," the permanently tanned tycoon once boasted.
But in 2015 he was forced to admit: "I am ruined. I haven't got a thing."
Like many of his flamboyant declarations, it was to be taken with a pinch of salt - although he was indeed down to his last few mansions.
Born in occupied Paris on January 26, 1943, Tapie's beginnings were modest, selling televisions by day in working class Belleville while trying his hand as a crooner by night.
But he soon ditched the singing and amassed a small empire by the time he was 30 by taking over failing companies, scooping up 50 within a few years.
A sports fan with a boxer's build, Tapie also used his fortune to buy a cycling team which twice won the Tour de France.
In 1986 he purchased one of France's most-loved football clubs, Olympique de Marseille, guiding the team to five successive league triumphs and the 1993 Champions League title.
On the back of that success he forged a political career, winning election to the French parliament in 1989 and 1993 and becoming a European Parliament deputy in 1994 after briefly serving as a minister under President François Mitterrand.
But things began to unravel for the father of four as he faced a slew of legal woes, including charges of match-fixing during his time at Marseille.
In 1990 he made headlines by buying the German sportswear giant Adidas -- a purchase that would later come back to haunt him.
Read more of this AFP report published by FRANCE 24.