In 1837, French businessman Thierry Hermès founded the company after which his surname is named as a harness and saddle workshop for European nobles. I could not imagine that, almost two centuries later, that company would not only still be standing, but that it would have become a luxurious fashion brand that would have as its prescribers the international stars of the moment, such as Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore or Jennifer Lopez. Hermès ―the company―, which has a turnover of 11.6 billion euros annually and is worth 202 billion euros on the stock market, has filled successive generations of the Hermès family ―the businessman― with prosperity for decades without attracting attention. Until now, when Nicolas Puech, a fifth-generation descendant and the company’s first shareholder, has announced that he wants to adopt his gardener to make him the heir to his fortune.
Puech, 80 years old, single and without children, retired from the board of directors of the legendary fashion brand in 2014, but still maintains 5.7% of the company’s shares. In fact, at the beginning of the 2010s, the LVMH firm tried to take control of the company, so the heirs of the founding family decided to create a holding company to block the acquisition. Puech was the only one not to join it, so he is also the only one who maintains his shares. Thanks to them, he has a fortune estimated between 9,000 and 10,000 million Swiss francs (between 9,500 and 10,600 million euros), according to the magazine’s classification. Bilan, which makes him one of the richest men in Switzerland, where he currently resides in his luxurious mansion in La Fouly, a municipality of 66 inhabitants. Now, his intention is for all that fortune to pass into the hands of his “former gardener and handyman,” whose identity is unknown, but it is known that he is a 51-year-old man “from a modest Moroccan family,” according to has published the Geneva Tribune.
The Swiss media revealed on December 1 that, given his advanced age and lack of offspring, the tycoon had sent a letter to his lawyer in October 2022 to put his hereditary situation in order. In it, he asked for an adoption to be carried out to give his fortune to his gardener, who is known to be married to a Spanish woman and the father of two children. “In Switzerland, adopting an adult is not impossible, but it is unusual,” warned the Geneva Tribune. The procedure, according to his information, is still in process, but if successful the beneficiary could inherit “at least half” of his fortune.
Even so, adoption is not the main obstacle in Puech’s wishes. Apparently, he himself signed a succession pact in 2011 with the Isocrates Foundation, based in Geneva, to donate his fortune to them after his death. However, in a handwritten note dating from February 2023, consulted by the Swiss newspaper, the billionaire made a “change of course” and explained that “he intends to make other testamentary arrangements,” without specifying the causes of the change of direction. opinion.
When contacted by the AFP news agency the foundation, dedicated to the protection and promotion of public debate through projects to combat disinformation, she admitted that she had just learned of the desire of her until recently president to annul the succession pact, but that she was unaware of any alternative agreement. After learning of the new plans of the Hermès heir, the general secretary of the foundation, Nicolas Borsinger, referred to them in an interview with the Swiss media as a “sudden and unilateral annulment of a succession pact, carried out thanks to a act that must be considered null.” The foundation regrets that “its public utility activities” are “threatened in their sustainability” by circumstances “that are completely beyond its control.”
Meanwhile, the gardener from Puech remains silent, in his anonymity and increasingly closer to becoming a multimillionaire. According to figures published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serawill be able to collect around 40 million euros per year in dividends alone.
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