The heir to a luxury fashion fortune who previously promised his billions to a gardener now fears he has little left in the bank.
Nicolas Puech was valued by Forbes in 2024 at $13.6 billion, owing to the 81-year-old’s stake in the Parisian fashion house founded by his ancestor Thierry Hermès.
Five generations later and the eponymous brand best known for its Birkin and Kelly bags is France’s second-most-valuable company with its market capitalization reaching €230 billion ($248 billion).
As a result, Puech’s wealth soared from $3.1 billion in 2020 to more than quadruple the figure four years later, and last year the Frenchman shocked the world by saying he planned to pass on half of that fortune to his gardener.
In December 2023, the Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève reported that Puech was in the process of adopting his Moroccan gardener and handyman as his legal child and was rearranging the beneficiaries of his estate.
Yet it seems the billions Puech had promised to his would-be heir may no longer be his to bequeath.
In a court case which concluded this month, Puech said he no longer owns the assets in question: $13 billion’s worth of shares in Hermès International SCA.
Puech claimed he has no idea where the assets have vanished to and his former wealth manager, Eric Freymond, was to blame.
The heir said the bulk of his wealth came from Hermès stocks but, according to Bloomberg, he didn’t realize he no longer owned the shares. That’s because the running of his accounts had been handed to Freymond, with the wealth manager receiving all of Puech’s bank statements.
However, an appeals court in Geneva threw out this claim, Bloomberg reports, saying there was no evidence Freymond had hoodwinked his reclusive client over the two decades they worked together.
The court added that Puech signed numerous blank documents over to Freymond and willingly gave him control of his accounts, per Bloomberg.
But it seems the battle isn’t over yet. Grégoire Mangeat and Fanny Margairaz, Puech’s newly appointed lawyers, told Fortune they were “in the process of studying the criminal file in detail.”
They added they had nothing further to comment at this stage.
In a damning rebuttal to the case, Bloomberg reported, the court found the “‘gigantic fraud’ to which [Puech] was victim was undetectable to common mortals.”
Stephane Grodecki, who represented Freymond, told Fortune: “My client is shocked by the accusation of his former client.”
Grodecki added his client “never handled” the historic Hermès stock and continued: “My client will now examine all his legal possibility to defend his honor.”
They told media outlets they were satisfied with the outcome which included “harsh words” for the plaintiff.
Puech’s foundation
Further discord relating to Puech’s fortune is the philanthropic foundation he set up in 2011.
Puech—who is a resident of the Alpine Swiss retreat of Valais—launched the Isocrates Foundation to support public interest journalism and media organizations.
But late last year the foundation said it had “learned of its founder’s wish to cancel the contract of inheritance binding him to the foundation.”
It said the foundation was legally bound to Puech through a “contract of inheritance” signed in September 2011.
“From a legal point of view, a unilateral cancellation of the contract of inheritance seems void and unfounded,” the foundation added in December 2023. “The foundation has therefore opposed the cancellation of the contract, while leaving the door open for discussions with its founder.”
The statement said it does not wish to “judge or comment” on Puech’s plan to adopt his employee, and “continues to favor dialogue with its founder.”
