Months after he pledged to give his gardener a sizable portion of his enormous inheritance, the reclusive Hermès heir’s multibillion-dollar fortune appears to have disappeared.
The largest individual shareholder of the French fashion house, Nicolas Puech, 81, was informed by a Swiss court on July 12 that Eric Freymond, his wealth manager, who was tasked with monitoring the enormous treasure chest, could not be held accountable for the $13 billion fortune that went missing, according to Bloomberg.
The ruling was made after Puech’s attorneys asserted that their client had lost the roughly 6 million shares of Hermés stock that constituted the bulk of his enormous 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.
According to the outlet, the fashion house heir launched three lawsuits against Freymond a year later. The first claimed the wealth manager had concealed information and was unable to restore the Hermès shares.
The administration of his foundation, loans, and other investments he said Freymond managed are the subject of the other two cases.
The heir’s lost wealth is a result of Bernard Arnault, the owner of Louis Vuitton, trying to acquire Hermès in the early 2010s with Puech’s assistance.
Puech was shunned by the family after the hostile takeover attempt because of his suspected role in assisting Arnault in surreptitiously accumulating a share in the business.
According to Bloomberg, it led to Puech being removed from the Hermès supervisory board and Arnault selling his 23% stake in the business.
According to a spokesperson for Puech at the time, “He resigned because he has felt beleaguered by members of his family for several years, who have attacked him on several fronts, not only regarding LVMH.”
It is still unknown where his stock from the fallout is.
As part of the more than two-thirds of the luxury goods company that are still owned by the founding family, Puech reportedly held a 5.7% share in Hermes. The business is worth $220 billion.
The lost riches was revealed after Puech, a reputed childless recluse in Switzerland, engaged a strong legal team to amend his inheritance plans and formally adopt the gardener last year.
The heir’s relationship with the unnamed “gardener and handyman” and the length of time he has been employed by the fifth-generation descendent of Hermès founder Thierry Hermès are not well understood.
There is a lot of conjecture about this unconventional decision to transfer his enormous wealth and real estate holdings to his gardener.