Hermès Heir ‘Strongly Contests’ Lawsuit Over $16 Billion Fortune

A longstanding mystery surrounding the wealth of an octogenarian heir to the Hermès luxury fortune just got even murkier.

In a lawsuit filed last month in Washington, DC, Honor America Capital LLC accused Nicolas Puech of failing to deliver Hermès International SCA shares worth around €14 billion ($16 billion) as part of a sale agreement. The chairman of Honor America said the company and the purchase were backed by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

The plaintiff sought damages of more than $1.3 billion on the grounds that Puech did not uphold his end of the arrangement.

Puech’s lawyer, however, says his client was not involved in the deal. Gregoire Mangeat, who took over representation of Puech along with Fanny Margairaz last year, “strongly contests” that his client played any role in the sale or was even aware of it until reading about it in the press.

Qatari officials also declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Further complicating matters, it’s not clear if Puech could have sold the shares even if he had wanted to.

For years, the fifth-generation descendant of the Hermès founder has been entangled in lawsuits and investigations in France and Switzerland over the status of his inheritance, some six million shares of Hermès stock that Puech claims he no longer has access to.

The question of whether or not the heir still holds the shares was first raised more than a decade ago, after LVMH founder and luxury sector arch-rival Bernard Arnault revealed that he had stealthily amassed a stake in Hermès. At the time, the company was tightly controlled by the family.

In 2014, Arnault reached an agreement with the Hermès family under which LVMH had to distribute Hermès shares to its shareholders and not buy any more for five years. Arnault subsequently started unwinding his 23 percent holding and Puech quit the Hermès supervisory board. The fate of Puech’s shares was never clarified.

The mystery deepened in 2023, when Puech accused Eric Freymond, his former money manager of more than two decades, of mishandling his holdings. Freymond denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

An appeals court in Geneva rejected Puech’s allegation last July, concluding that he had willingly turned over management of his affairs to Freymond and could have revoked the agreement at any time. The ruling stated that Freymond had managed two Swiss bank accounts containing Puech’s Hermès stock from 1998 to 2022 but that the heir retained control over them.

The court also failed to find any evidence that he had been duped. Puech, who said his wealth has been wiped out, did not appeal the 2024 decision. But the status and whereabouts of the Hermès shares remain under dispute.

“We are in the process of enquiring with individuals and institutions involved in the case to determine where these shares are and how to recover them,” Mangeat said in a statement to Bloomberg.

If the 82-year-old Puech still owns the roughly 5.7 percent original stake, he would be the largest individual shareholder in the French maker of Birkin handbags and colourful silk scarves. The company, which declined to comment on the case, has seen its market value skyrocket in recent years. With a net worth of about $192 billion, the clan controlling the Hermès group is Europe’s wealthiest family, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The US lawsuit is the latest instalment in this increasingly tangled tale.

Documents included with the complaint purport to be signed letters and sale agreements between Honor America Capital and Puech, via his lawyer named in the filings, Francois Besse. A letter dated Feb. 27 signed by Honor America Capital Chairman Abdulla Mishal Al Thani says, “we look forward to completing this transaction” which has the “full funding commitment from His Highness,” the emir of Qatar.

Puech and a Delaware-based holding company called Borysthene LLC, described in the complaint as “affiliated” with the heir, agreed to the share sale in February. Following repeated delays, however, the deal fell apart in March after Besse informed Honor America Capital that the shares couldn’t be retrieved from Geneva-based custodian bank Lombard Odier “despite best and repeated efforts.” The bank declined to comment.

The suit calls attention to how Qatar has channeled its energy wealth into the luxury sector. The country’s sovereign wealth fund and other entities based in the Gulf nation own prized assets such as London’s Harrods, Paris’ department store Printemps as well as fashion labels Valentino and Balmain via Mayhoola, an investment firm.

Neither Besse nor Jamil Zouaoui, the lawyer representing Honor America Capital, responded to repeated requests for comment.

According to the documents, Besse, who had previously represented Puech, obtained power of attorney for the heir in September. The sale and purchase agreement also name Freymond, Puech’s former wealth manager, as a “consultant” on the deal, although it does not specify which side he was working with.

Because the new submissions were filed under seal, the status of the lawsuit is unclear. But the stakes keep getting higher.

Last week, Hermès’ valuation reached €249 billion, surpassing LVMH for the first time. The shift made Hermès the most valuable member of France’s CAC40 benchmark index.

By Tara Patel, Hugo Miller and Angelina Rascouet

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