Hermès was founded in 1837 by Thierry Hermès. The company initially made horse harnesses for European royals. Today, Hermès is a luxury behemoth known for its silk scarves, perfume, jewelry, and leather goods. The company's famous "Birkin Bag" (named after the late actress Jane Birkin) ranges in price from $15,000 to as much as $200,000. For a single bag!
Hermès went public in 1993. In 2023, Hermès generated $14 billion in revenue. Today, it has a market cap of $230 billion. By comparison, rival luxury goods holding company LVMH has a market cap of around $330 billion. LVMH is a conglomerate made up of dozens of luxury brands, none of which were actually founded by CEO/Chairman, Bernard Arnault. Bernard Arnault methodically built LVMH through acquisitions that today have given him control of Bulgari, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Tiffany, Marc Jacobs, Sephora, Fendi, TAG Heuer and, obviously, Louis Vuitton, Moet and Hennessy, to name a few. And even though Bernard did not actually create any of the companies he now controls, swallowing them up into his empire has given him a net worth of $181 billion. At various points in recent years, Bernard has been the #1 richest person in the world. I mention Bernard because he is an important part of the story I'm about to tell.
Unlike all the companies Bernard now owns, even two centuries after it was founded, even after becoming publicly traded, Hermès is still majority-owned by Theirry Hermès's direct descendants. A couple dozen members of the extended Hermès family (under various last names) control 67% of the company's public equity. That means if you won the genetic lottery and were born into this family, you are extremely rich.
(Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Hermes)
Take Nicolas Puech. Nicolas is the 81-year-old great-grandson of Thierry Hermès. When Nicolas' mother, Yvonne Hermès, died in 1996, Nicolas inherited her 5% stake in Hermès. Nicolas inherited another 1% stake when his sister died. His 6% stake makes him one of the largest individual shareholders in the company. It also makes him EXTREMELY EXTREMELY RICH.
A 6% stake in a $230 billion company is worth, on paper, a little under $14 billion.
Being worth $14 billion would make Nicolas one of the 20 richest people in Europe and roughly the 110th richest person in the world.
And yet, something very strange is going on with Nicolas' fortune. He claims he has no idea where it went. And I do not mean that he has no idea where it went, as in he spent it all and has no idea how that happened. Nicolas literally does not know where the physical company shares are, and therefore, he claims to have no money at all anymore.
This is actually just the latest weird twist in the story of Nicolas Puech's fortune. Nicolas has no children. In 2017, he founded a philanthropic organization called the Isocrates Foundation, which was to inherit his Hermès stake. The contract he has with the foundation has a clause that allows him to change his intentions if he ever becomes a father. In January of this year, it was revealed that Nicolas had enacted that clause and announced his intention to leave at least half of his fortune to his newly adopted son. If you're picturing a baby boy adopted from an orphanage, I have a surprise for you. Nicolas legally adopted his middle-aged former gardener. This gardener was now the heir to one of the largest fortunes in the world. And best of all, for the gardener, following Swiss law, by being adopted, he would not pay a dime in inheritance taxes.
Fast forward to the present.
Nicolas claims he no longer has any money at all and that he does not control the 6% stake in Hermès. He further claims that a former financial advisor "pilfered" the shares in a "gigantic fraud" that might date back more than two decades and might involve Bernard Arnault.
Hermès, the company, somehow does not know who controls the missing 6% stake. Complicating the matter is the fact that Nicolas' shares are/were "bearer shares," a type of stock that does not need to be registered under a specific person's name. By contrast, most of the Hermès family members own "registered shares," shares that are issued to specific names.
To find the shares, Nicolas thinks French investigators need to talk to Bernard Arnault.
In 2001, Bernard began buying Hermès shares on the public market. By 2010, he had somehow acquired 23% of Hermès without the family finding out. Bernard was technically legally required to have disclosed his stake when it became greater than 5%, he did not. To prevent Bernard from acquiring any more shares, dozens of Hermès family members signed an agreement that forbade them from selling any shares for several decades. The move made it essentially impossible for an outsider to gain a majority stake. Nicolas was NOT one of the family members who signed the lock-up. Bernard was sent packing and actually had to pay a fine of 8 million Euros for violating securities laws. He also agreed to distribute the Hermès to LVMH shareholders.
Hermès family members believed that Nicolas sold his shares to Arnault. Nicolas denies that claim and continued to attend family business meetings in the years since.
Nicolas suspects his former financial manager may have either sold or lent his stake to Arnault. In a lawsuit, Nicolas claims his former financial manager created a trust in a foreign country that now either holds the Hermès shares OR the proceeds from the share sales. The financial manager admits that he was involved in Arnault's collection of Hermès shares and received a commission for his work, but he adamantly denies that Nicolas' shares were ever part of what became Arnault's 23% stake.
And so the mystery deepens. Somewhere in the world, there's a 6% stake in one of the world's most prestigious luxury brands—worth approximately $14 billion—that seems to have vanished into thin air. The cast of characters reads like a French thriller: an 81-year-old heir who can't find his fortune, his middle-aged gardener-turned-adopted-son who may or may not inherit billions, a luxury mogul who once tried to secretly take over the company, and a mysterious financial advisor who may hold the key to it all. As French investigators dig deeper into this labyrinth of bearer shares, foreign trusts, and decades-old transactions, one thing is clear: in the rarefied world of French luxury goods, even lost fortunes come with a designer label.
