Nicolas Puech, the heir to luxury retail empire Hermes, claimed he planned to adopt his 51-year-old gardener to pass on a $11 billion fortune.
Though now, Puech is going back on his word after explaining this so-called fortune has now seemingly “vanished”. Puech, being the 80-year-old black sheep of the French family tycoon, had created quite the stir when he had announced his plans with leaving more than half of his soon to be estate fortune.
As he has no children and remains by himself in Switzerland, Puech had hired an entire legal team to draw up papers to finalize his gardener’s adoption and to revise his will.
There isn’t much known on why Puech picked his gardener specifically or what his ties are to him, but it seems likely he had been working for the fifth generations of this family fashion house since Hermes founder, Thierry Hermes.
However, despite the lack of information, the philanthropic organization that Puech had founded back in 2011, the Isocrates Foundation, is now starting to halt the process, or now reportedly from Bloomberg even cancelling the inheritance contract as a whole.
The contract had initially stated that an estimate of $6 million shares of Hermes would be left to the foundation unless Puech became a father, then in that case his son would receive at least 50 percent of the inheritance, CNN reported.
Though, even the foundation is highly confused as to this cancellation as possibly some people are. Isocrates states “Bloomberg, from a legal standpoint, the abrupt and unilateral annulment of a succession agreement appears void and unfounded. The foundation has opposed this move, while leaving the door open for discussion with its founder and president”.
Puech’s lawyer, Jorn-Albert Bostelman, has stated that he might hold a press conference to get away from any media deception, or to separate fact from fiction that has been presented.
Going back to the inheritance, if it goes through, the worker would inherit a portion of Puech’s fortune, even including the $5.9 million heavily valued estates in Marrakesh, Morocco, and Montreux.
Yet, Puech also recognized that whatever he inherited would also go towards his foundation which some view as more of a business standpoint rather than a sympathetical one like adopting his gardener.
According to the New York Post, they state, “A document outlining Isocrates statues says ‘Under no circumstances will the assets of the Foundation be returned to the founder, to heirs or donors.’
After everything that Isocrates had reported to Bloomberg has now distanced themselves from their reports and efforts of trying to remove themselves from the situation as whole.
All this is still going to Puech after triggering a rift in the family business in 2014 when he refused to pool his holdings with the other dozens of relatives within the family, This was actually led by his brother, Bertrand Puech, due to the fact that Puech wanted to tighten and control the brand to repeal their rival LVMH.
This ended with Bertrand having a departure from the company’s board after being consistently scrutinized by the rest of his family members.