[6] Robert Louis-Dreyfus was initially a poor student who failed his Baccalauréat,[7] but he excelled at poker, winning considerable amounts of money from his friends at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris.

[4] He spent the early years of his working life mentored by Siegmund Warburg, in the family business of the Louis-Dreyfus Group.

He proved equally successful when in 1994 he took the top job at Adidas, the German-based sporting goods maker.

Marseille also missed out on the Ligue 1 title during Louis-Dreyfus's tenure, though shortly before his death they finished second to Bordeaux and qualified for the group stage of the UEFA Champions League.

[citation needed] Louis-Dreyfus was also a shareholder in the Belgium football club Standard Liège, and was involved in the creation of Infront Sports & Media in 2002 (transition from the former KirchSport completed in February 2003) acting as the company's chairman of the board.

The Swiss-based sports marketing agency was handling the media rights distribution of the FIFA World Cup in 2002 and 2006.

[citation needed] In October 2015, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that the bidding committee for the FIFA World Cup 2006 had set up a slush fund that Louis-Dreyfus, at the time CEO of Adidas, filled with CHF 10.3 million in 2000.

Following his death, his enterprises were inherited and supervised by Margarita Louis-Dreyfus,[7] she is considered to be the richest Russian woman today.