An Hermès heir is attempting to recover his reportedly missing fortune—again—though this time, he’s going after Bernard Arnault.
Nicolas Puech is suing the LVMH CEO, as well as the luxury conglomerate itself, to try to regain his alleged lost shares in Hermès, totaling around $16.3 billion (€14 billion). The 81-year-old filed the lawsuit in a Paris civil court last May, Bloomberg reported.
Puech claims that his former wealth advisor Eric Freymond sold his Hermès shares, totaling somewhere in the realm of six million, to Arnault without his knowledge. This transaction allegedly occurred with the LVMH titan was building a stake in Hermès International SCA back in the 2010s, according to Bloomberg. Puech claims he put Freymond in charge of his shares, which he no longer knows the whereabouts of. The fifth-generation member of the Hermès family also sued Freymond, who died this past July.
LMVH and Arnault denied Puech’s claims, saying in a statement that the group had never owned or dealt with any undisclosed Hermès shares.
“LVMH and its shareholder firmly reiterate that they have never, at any time, diverted shares of Hermès International in any manner and that they hold any no ‘hidden’ shares—contrary to the implications put forward by Mr. Nicolas Puech, who has chosen to turn to the French courts after being dismissed on numerous occasions by the Swiss judiciary,” the conglomerate said, per WWD.
Puech had previously accused Freymond of mishandling his shares last year in a Swiss court; the judge threw out the claims in July 2024, saying the Hermès heir had “blind trust” in his former wealth advisor and that he willingly allowed Freymond to manage his funds, including giving the advisor access to his bank accounts.
Puech’s lawyer declined to provide a statement to Bloomberg.
One of the largest luxury brands in the world, Hermès is currently valued at $220.58 billion, according to Yahoo Finance. The family heirs are also worth a pretty penny, with a combined net worth of around $155 billion last year, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That figure was bolstered by a $5 billion payout that occurred earlier in 2025 thanks for four consecutive years of record-breaking sales; the company itself is controlled by around 100 heirs who own two-thirds of Hermès altogether.
This most recent news is just the latest installment in the saga of Arnault and Hermès. The titan had quietly accumulated a 23 percent stake in the luxury brand over a decade ago; the family then banded together to prevent Arnault from taking over Hermès altogether. In the aftermath, Puech reportedly had a fall out with his relatives, resulting in his departure from the Hermès supervisory board in 2014, according to Bloomberg. The trail of where Puech’s shares in the luxury brand went, though, seems to end there. The heir has filed a separate criminal investigation to discover where his allegedly missing shares have gone.
