An Heir To The Hermes Fortune Has Decided To Gift His Gardener His $11 Billion Fortune and All His Properties And His Family Is Pissed
Fortune - The billionaire grandson of the founder of fashion giant Hermès is reportedly planning to adopt his 51-year-old gardener as part of an audacious and acrimonious succession plan.
In a plot reminiscent of the movie Annie with a highly unusual twist, 80-year-old Nicolas Puech is in the process of making his “former gardener and handyman” from a “modest Moroccan family” his legal child, Swiss publication Tribune de Genève reported last week.
The Frenchman, who is unmarried and childless, is a fifth-generation heir of Thierry Hermès, who founded the luxury fashion house in 1837 by opening a workshop in Paris.
The brand has since grown to a valuation of $220 billion and is now the third-largest publicly listed company in France.
I fucking love this move for so many reasons.
1- Have you ever been around or talked to a wicked rich person? Like not just Portnoy rich. We're talking elite. Like Ivy League, Blue Blood, Skull & Bones level shit. They're the absolute worst. Their entire identity and self-worth revolves around their money and status. A function full of these people is seventh circle of hell stuff. The only thing they're concerned about is what you can do for them. And if the answer is nothing, then see ya.
They're also the kind of people who love to shove in your face how not-on-their-level you and I, the "proletariat" as they call us, are. Finding every which way to correct you on things like the pronunciation of "Hermes" - "it's pronounced air-mes. Did you know he was the Greek god of trade, wealth, luck, fertility, animal husbandry, sleep, language, thieves, and travel? You should read up on your mythology more."
Shit like that.
The fact this guy is snubbing all of his equalling snobbish family and friends to hand over the keys to his fortune, to his gardener, is all time.
2- Good for this Puech guy for being somewhat normal.
It's not at all surprising that after probably being bored and lonely as fuck, he became buddies with his gardener. One of probably a small handful of normal people he encounters a day. He probably realized after actually acknowledging the guy's presence, and shooting the shit with him a few times that "man, this guys actually pretty cool. And normal. And isn't obsessed with wealth." And took a liking to him quickly.
Sure beats the hell out of the vultures and bloodsuckers he has to deal with endlessly.
3- You want to talk about an all-time grudge? And exacting revenge? If that's your jam, you're going to love this even more-
In 2014 the Hermès heir quit the company’s supervisory board in acrimonious circumstances after fashion rival LVMH acquired 23% of Hermès as part of a hostile takeover bid, largely by stealth.
Puech’s other family members set up a holding company with their shares to block a takeover by LVMH, though Puech held on to his stake.
LVMH and founder Bernard Arnault later agreed to divest their shares in the company and agreed not to buy any more for five years. However, the feud appears to have caused unmendable wounds between Puech and his other family members.
“He resigned because he has felt for several years beleaguered by members of his family, who have attacked him on several fronts, not only regarding LVMH,” a spokesperson for Puech said at the time, Fashion Network reported via AFP.
“He has had some very bad experiences and felt very badly and felt harshly criticized on numerous occasions, even while he is very attached to Hermès.”
When LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) swooped in like a vulture, trying to get its claws on the beloved Hermès, our guy Nicolas was right in the middle of that storm. The family feud that followed was so dramatic it could have had its own reality show.
When LVMH acquired a significant chunk of Hermès in the hostile takeover bid, it was like the fashion world's equivalent of a soap opera plot twist. Something straight out of “Succession.” Nicolas Puech, clearly not one to back down from a fight, hung on to his stake in the company. The rest of his family formed a united front, setting up a holding company to protect their shares from LVMH's clutches.
Fast forward to today, and the feud seems to have turned the Puech family into sworn enemies. Nicolas Puech, having had enough of his kin's shenanigans, decided it was time for a little familial payback. And what better way to do that than by adopting the gardener?
We're watching a real-life Mr. Deeds unfold pretty much-
And he's not posturing, either to scare his family. He's as serious as cancer about doing this.
The billionaire is already in the process of passing on that wealth to his former gardener and has hired a legal team to take him through the process, Tribune de Genève reported. He is also reportedly in the process of rearranging the benefactors of his estate.
The gardener, whose identity is unknown, is reported to be married to a Spanish woman with whom he has two children. Tribune de Genève reports that he could inherit half of Puech’s wealth.
Italian outlet Sky TG24 reported that Puech had already handed the 51-year-old the keys to a property in Marrakesh, Morocco, and a villa in Montreux, Switzerland, worth a combined total of €5.5 million ($5.9 million).
Good for Nicolas. Good for the Gardener. And good for the production studio that jumps all over this feel-good story and turns it into a straight-to-streaming movie.