An 82-year-old heir of Hermès claims 14 billion euros in compensation from LVMH and its CEO for alleged theft of shares

An heir to the French luxury group Hermès, a fifth-generation descendant of the fashion designer Thierry Hermès, claims before the French justice system giant LVMH and its CEO, Bernard Arnault, a compensation of about 14,000 million euros because he considers he has been deprived of his shares in the attempted takeover fifteen years ago. Nicolas Puech, 82, has launched this civil procedure against LVMH and Arnault (76 years old), who managed to accumulate a 23% stake in Hermès in what was one of the biggest duels between French companies, according to local media.

The lawsuit led to a hearing on November 20 at the Paris Judicial Court, which was first reported by the newspaper Liberation about the LVMH operation to take control of Hermès in 2010. The attempt ended in failure and with a penalty for the first of eight million euros imposed by the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) for hiding information from the market.

Puech, who had a package of six million Hermès titles, delegated its management to a financial advisor for twenty years, Eric Freymond, against whom he sued with a lawsuit filed in December 2023, for having abused his trust. Specifically, he reproached that financial advisor, who died in July, for having secretly transferred his securities, currently valued at around 14 billion euros, to LVMH through a series of schemes.

His lawsuit is now directed against the boss of LVMH, who has always stated that he had no knowledge that these securities had been stolen from their owner. The fact is that after the stock market battle and reaching an agreement with Hermès, He resold them and then obtained a capital gain of 3.8 billion euros.

The LVMH group issued a statement in which denied having diverted shares from Hermès International and having any “hidden” securities“, while retaining its right to go to court to “enforce its rights.” The French luxury giant considered itself the victim of “a clearly orchestrated press campaign” and accused certain information that recently appeared about its entry into the capital of Hermès more than fifteen years ago as “baseless.”

He accused Puech of going to French justice after having suffered several judicial setbacks in Switzerland. The group recalled that LVMH and Hermès reached an agreement in September 2014 protected by the Paris Commercial Court and that two investigating judges dismissed the allegations against it the following year.