Heir Mess
How a $13 billion fortune disappeared
Back in 2023, Hermès heir Nicolas Puech made headlines when he adopted his gardener, Butrak, with the intention of leaving his fortune to him. At the time, my reaction was something along the lines of “huh, good for him.” Sure, it’s not every day that a billionaire announces that their fortune will go to an employee, but it seemed like a good thing that Puech, who had no children of his own, had found someone who he considered a son.
I didn’t give it much thought after that, but, as it turns out, there’s so much more to this story than just a billionaire choosing an unusual heir. The story of Nicolas Puech is an ongoing mystery about a missing fortune, family rivalry, and alleged betrayal.
I’ll start from the beginning.
There’s a few notable players in this story: Nicholas Puech, great-grandson of the Hermès founder and owner of a 6% stake in the company (worth about $13 billion), Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH and one of the wealthiest men in the world, and Eric Fraymond, Puech’s former financial advisor.
Since much of the story has been surrounded by a web of legal battles, consider this all to be alleged.
Nicolas Puech has had a rocky relationship with the rest of the Hermès family since 2010, when LVMH abruptly declared that it was in possession of 14.7% of Hermès shares and counting (the number eventually rose to 23%). The Hermès family had maintained majority ownership of the brand’s shares since going public in 1993, so it was a shock that their rival had taken such a huge stake in the company from right under their noses.
How did their competitor gain such surprising access? The trail lead back to financial advisor Eric Fraymond, who had “discretionary management mandates” that gave him the power to manage funds of Puech and other Hermès shareholders. Fraymond worked with LVMH to transfer shares without being noticed. According to Fraymond, Puech was a knowing participant in the operation, and eager to build a relationship with LVMH. Fraymond has claimed that Puech’s inherited 6% of shares were not among those transferred to Arnault.
Puech completely denies any involvement, and claims that he trusted Fraymond and just signed whatever Fraymond put in front of him.
While the rest of the Hermès family responded to the threat of LVMH by pooling their shares in a holding company to ensure that the family would retain their majority control, Puech declined to participate and kept his 6% of shares to himself.
That is, if he even still had the shares to keep. From that point on, it’s been a case of Schrödinger’s Shares, because they may or may not be sitting in a bank box somewhere. The Hermès family was never able to verify if Puech still had his shares after the incident. He claimed they were kept in a bank account in Geneva, but in 2014 he refused to provide a bank statement to verify their existence, and the Hermès company left his alleged share ownership out of their annual report.
Puech carried on as if he still had access to the shares, and even went so far as to make headlines with his plan to adopt his gardener, Butrak, in order to leave him half his wealth (around $6.5 billion).
The move was a surprise, and came with its own share of drama. Puech had formerly set up a charity, the Isocrates Foundation, which describes itself as “an independent philanthropic foundation, dedicated to the protection and promotion of public debate.” The foundation was set to receive Puech’s fortune since he had no heir, but received a letter canceling the inheritance agreement, as Puech wrote, “Not only because I was mistaken in believing that this agreement, in favor of my…foundation, could protect me and my assets, but also because I intend to make other testamentary arrangements.” The other agreements being, of course, his gardener of two decades, Butrak. Fraymond contested the decision by filing a report to the Swiss Welfare Agency claiming that Butrak and his wife were manipulating Puech for his fortune, but his concerns were dismissed.
All seemed to have settled down - that is, until Puech declared that his fortune had disappeared.
No one seems to know for sure where Puech’s shares, worth around $13 billion, have gone. Puech blamed Fraymond, accusing his former advisor of “massive fraud,” but a Geneva court rejected his claim, as did the appeals court, which stated that Puech’s allegations against Freymond were “undetectable to common mortals.”
Enter the Qatari royal family. Because why not add another lawsuit to the fray? The lawsuit alleged that Puech had failed to deliver on an agreed upon $16 billion sale of Hermès shares. Puech’s lawyer denies that Puech was even aware of the alleged deal, and that he learned about it from the press when the news broke. It sounds like a wild claim, but his current lawyer, Francois Besse, holds power of attorney for the 82-year old, so it’s plausible that he truly had no idea. The alleged deal fell through after Besse was unable to retrieve the shares from a Geneva bank where they were supposedly held. The lawsuit is under seal, so further details are unknown.
Events take a somber turn from here. On July 23 of this year, Eric Freymond was hit by a train in his Swiss hometown, ending his life. Swiss police have treated the death as a suicide. It’s a tragic end to his story, and he leaves behind a wife and two daughters. Despite their estrangement, Puech delivered a statement offering condolences and recognizing their 25 years of friendship.
We may never know for sure what has become of Puech’s fortune.
Author’s note: I began writing this article about six months ago, when the news broke about the Qatari royal family’s lawsuit. It was a challenge to sort out a coherent timeline of the whole affair, since so much is unknown, and I set the draft aside for a while until picking it up last week. I’d originally viewed the whole thing as a somewhat lighthearted spectacle, just billionaires with the kind of problems that felt ripped from a TV drama. However, in light of Freymond’s death, I want to acknowledge the more human side of the story, and share it in a respectful manner. It’s my hope that this article succinctly breaks down the mystery of a lost fortune without sensationalizing a tragedy or offering my own outside speculation.