Switzerland/France: an heir to Hermès saw his billions of euros disappear

Nicolas Puech, one of the heirs of the French house in leather goods Hermès, wants to shed light on the mysterious disappearance of his actions, he said on Monday, through his lawyer, after the death of Eric Freymond, his former fortune manager.

Last week, the Geneva Tribune et The point had reported that Mr. Freymond, against whom Nicolas Puech had complained, ended his life. In a statement transmitted by his lawyer, Mr. Puech said he learned “with sadness” his death and addressed “his most sincere thoughts to his family”, “despite the public and judicial disputes” who opposed them, but also said he wanted to “shed light” on the disappearance of his titles, which aroused a strong reaction from one of the deceased lawyers.

“The decency and elegance perhaps commanded the mourning of Mr. Freymond’s family,” said Jean Tamalet, one of the lawyers for the Geneva financier, to AFP. Nicolas Puech, 82, is one of the great-grandchildren of the founder of the leather goods house in rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, in Paris.

Often presented as in cold with the rest of his family, the octogenarian who resides in Switzerland had inherited six million shares representing 5.76% of the capital of Hermès, which during the current price represents an amount of almost 14.5 billion euros.

The fate of Mr. Puech’s titles is at the heart of a long and complex case with multiple twists and turns, one of the unresolved questions being whether these actions had been sold or not when Bernard Arnault, the boss of LVMH, had discreetly accumulated participation in his competitor.

In 2023, this case had taken a new round when Mr. Puech said he was ruined and filed a complaint against his former fortune manager, believing that he had recourse to subtle montages to make his actions disappear.

In the press release sent by his lawyer, Mr. Puech explained that Mr. Freymond had been “a friend and an advisor with whom the collaboration has always been in total confidence”. But “our relationship has unfortunately broke following extreme gravity in connection with my six million titles of the Hermès International company on which all the light has yet to be made,” he added.

“I have long been convinced that Nicolas Puech has no longer had his actions,” said the manager of the Hermès group on Thursday, Axel Dumas, interviewed the case of the disappearance of the actions of one of the group’s heirs. “I am waiting for legal action. I do not believe that these actions can be found, “he added.