The reclusive Hermes heir’s multi-billion dollar fortune appears to have vanished just months after he promised to donate the bulk of his vast inheritance to gardeners.
Nicolas Puech, 81, the French fashion house’s largest individual shareholder, was ruled by a Swiss court on July 12 that asset manager Eric Freymond cannot be held responsible for the $13 billion lost fortune, even though he was entrusted with managing a giant treasure chest. Bloomberg report.
The ruling came after Puech’s lawyers argued that their client no longer owns around six million Hermes shares, which make up the bulk of his vast fortune.
The court also found that no evidence had been presented that his financial advisers had mismanaged his assets, and said Mr Pooch, a so-called black sheep of a wealthy family, was not the victim of a “massive fraud” spanning 24 years, during which at least some of his shares had been sold.
According to Bloomberg, a Swiss court ruled that Puech’s “blind trust” in Freimond, who had full control over his bank accounts, did not show the asset manager had deceived clients.
Bloomberg reported that the court’s final decision meant that Puech gave the management of his fortune to Freimond, whom he hired in 1998.
According to a Swiss court, Puech will end his management of Freimond’s vast fortune in October 2022 and begin sorting out his estate and arranging his succession.
A year later, the fashion house’s heirs filed three lawsuits against Freimond, the first of which claimed his estate managers concealed information and did not and could not return his Hermès shares, the media reported.
The remaining two cases relate to management of foundations, loans and other investments that Freimond allegedly oversaw.
The heirs’ lost fortunes are part of the fallout from Louis Vuitton owner Bernard Arnault’s attempt to take over Hermes with the help of Mr. Puesch in the early 2010s.
The hostile takeover attempt led to Puech being ousted by the family for allegedly helping Arnault secretly buy up shares in the company.
As a result, Arnault sold his 23% stake in the company and Puech was removed from Hermes’ supervisory board, according to Bloomberg.
“He resigned because he felt he had been subjected to harassment for years by members of his family who had been attacking him on many fronts, not just in relation to LVMH,” a spokesman for Mr Puech said at the time.
The whereabouts of his inventory as a result of the fallout remains a mystery.
Puech reportedly owned a 5.7% stake in Hermes, part of the more than two-thirds of the luxury goods company still owned by its founding family, which has valued the company at $220 billion.
News of the disappearance of the fortune comes after Puech, who is said to be a childless recluse living in Switzerland, formalised the adoption of his gardener last year and hired a high-powered legal team to amend his estate arrangements.
Not much is known about the heir’s relationship with the unidentified “gardener/handler,” or how long he worked for the fifth-generation descendant of Hermès founder Thierry Hermès.
This extraordinary move to hand over his vast fortune and real estate to a gardener sparked intense speculation.
The gardener, who is married to a Spanish woman and reportedly has two children, was set to inherit a significant portion of Puech’s fortune, which includes properties in Marrakech, Morocco, and Montreux, Switzerland, worth $5.9 million.
