The multibillion-dollar fortune belonging to the reclusive Hermès heir has seemingly vanished months after he promised to donate a large chunk of his colossal inheritance to his gardener.
Nicolas Puech, 81, the largest individual shareholder of the French fashion house, was told by a Swiss court on July 12 that his wealth manager, Eric Freymond, cannot be held responsible for the missing $13 billion fortune after he was entrusted with keeping track of the enormous treasure chest, Bloomberg reported.
The decision was handed down after Puech’s lawyers claimed that their client no longer owned about 6 million shares of Hermés stock, which made up the majority of his massive fortune.
The court also found no evidence was presented that his financial adviser mismanaged any of his wealth and said the so-called black sheep of the wealthy family, Puech, was not the victim of “gigantic fraud” over 24 years — during which time, at least some of the stock was sold.
The Swiss court ruled that Puech’s “blind trust” in Freymond, who had complete control of his bank account, does not indicate that the wealth manager duped his client, according to Bloomberg.
The court’s final ruling was that Puech willingly turned over management of his wealth to Freymond, whom he hired in 1998, Bloomberg reported.
Puech ended Freymond’s control of his vast wealth in October 2022 and set out to take stock of his fortune and organize his succession, according to the Swiss court.
A year later, the fashion house heir filed three cases against Freymond — the first alleging the wealth manager withheld information and wouldn’t and couldn’t return the Hermès shares, according to the outlet.
The two other cases are related to the management of his foundation, loans, and other investments he claimed Freymond oversaw.
The heir’s missing fortune is part of the fallout from Louis Vuitton owner Bernard Arnault’s attempt to take over Hermès with Puech’s help in the early 2010s.
The attempted hostile takeover left Puech a family outcast for his alleged involvement in helping Arnault stealthily rack up a stake in the company.
It resulted in Arnault unwinding his 23% holding in the company and Puech being pushed out of the Hermès supervisory board, according to Bloomberg.
“He resigned because he has felt for several years beleaguered by members of his family, who have attacked him on several fronts, not only regarding LVMH,” stated a spokesperson for Puech at the time.
The whereabouts of his stock from the fallout remain a mystery.
Puech was said to have owned a 5.7% stake in Hermes, part of the more than two-thirds of the luxury goods maker still owned by the founding family. The company is valued at $220 billion.
The news of the missing fortune comes after Puech, a reportedly childless recluse living in Switzerland, hired a formidable legal team last year to formalize the gardener’s adoption and revise his estate arrangements.
Not much is known about the heir’s ties to the unidentified “gardener and handyman” or how long he has worked for the fifth-generation descendant of Hermès founder Thierry Hermès.
This unorthodox move to pass on his immense wealth and real estate properties to his gardener has sparked intense speculation.
The gardener is reportedly married to a Spanish woman with two children and would have inherited a significant portion of Puech’s fortune, including substantial properties in Marrakesh, Morocco, and Montreux, Switzerland, valued at $5.9 million.