LVMH Fires Back at Hermès Heir Over Missing $15 Billion Fortune

PARIS—It took years to discover that a multi-billion-dollar Hermès fortune had vanished. Years of subsequent legal battles have yet to untangle who is to blame.

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Nicolas Puech, the Hermès heir, filed a lawsuit last year valuing his losses at more than $15 billion. The suit names his former wealth manager, luxury titan LVMH, and its chief executive, Bernard Arnault, among the defendants.

Meanwhile, Paris prosecutors are conducting a criminal probe into the matter. They recently placed three lawyers under formal investigation, including an attorney who worked for LVMH more than a decade ago when the group was quietly buying up Hermès shares. All three have denied wrongdoing.

Now, LVMH is fighting back. In a 20-page court submission reviewed by the news outlet The Wall Street Journal, LVMH argues that it has been dragged into a private dispute that belongs strictly between Puech and his former financial adviser, Eric Freymond, who died in 2025.

The luxury conglomerate claims Puech is targeting Arnault and LVMH simply because they have the deep pockets to pay substantial damages, unlike the estate of Freymond and his various companies.

“If Nicolas Puech did not receive the proceeds from the sale of his shares, then that is a matter involving Eric Freymond, not LVMH,” the company stated in the confidential filing submitted earlier this month. It argued that any alleged misappropriation would have been “entirely unknown” to the group.

The allegations strike at one of the most controversial chapters of Arnault’s career. The billionaire built his empire in part through audacious corporate raids, starting with his takeover of LVMH in the late 1980s. After losing a bruising battle for Gucci at the turn of the century, he set his sights on Hermès.

French investigators believe that much of Puech’s roughly 6% stake in Hermès was transferred to French bank Société Générale as part of equity-swap arrangements with LVMH. In October 2010, Arnault stunned the luxury world by revealing that LVMH had quietly amassed a 17% stake in its rival, triggering a fierce backlash from the Hermès family. This audacious brand acquisition move shook the luxury world.

Investigators are now trying to determine whether anyone involved in that operation knew that the shares flowing into LVMH’s covert Hermès position had been transferred without Puech's knowledge or consent.

In its filing, LVMH maintained that its strategy was to partner with Puech to influence Hermès, not to buy his stake outright. The company stated it was unaware that any of Puech’s shares were included in the transactions, calling allegations to the contrary “defamatory and baseless.”

Against this backdrop, LVMH portrayed Puech’s 2025 lawsuit as the latest chapter in a decade-long series of claims brought by Puech and Freymond after LVMH abandoned its pursuit of Hermès.

In the filing, LVMH points to a 2016 Swiss lawsuit in which Freymond claimed he orchestrated the group’s covert buildup of the Hermès stake—an investment that ultimately generated roughly €3.8 billion (about $4.3 billion) in profit. Freymond had argued that his role entitled him to 10% of those gains.

The following year, Puech sought between €1.25 billion and €2.38 billion in damages, claiming LVMH had breached an agreement giving him the right of first refusal over the group’s Hermès shares.

The filing reveals that LVMH responded in 2017 by filing an extortion complaint against Puech and Freymond in Switzerland. The complaint was later dismissed, and the parties agreed to settle their various legal disputes two years later.

In its new filing, LVMH said it had become “exasperated by the harassment” and perplexed by the relationship between the two men. LVMH entered settlement negotiations at the invitation of a Swiss judge following the death of Pierre Godé—Arnault’s longtime lieutenant and a key architect of the Hermès stake-building strategy—coupled with the dismissal of its extortion complaint and the threat of a highly public court battle.

The settlement, finalized in London and signed by Arnault, Puech, and Freymond, was intended to bring a definitive end to all disputes without any admission of liability. As part of the deal, LVMH agreed to pay €10 million each to Puech and Freymond.

By then, LVMH, French market regulators, and Hermès all harbored serious doubts that Puech still controlled the stake he and Freymond insisted remained intact.

It was only in 2022 that Puech himself began to question the fate of his fortune. After hiring lawyers and forensic accountants, he concluded that nearly all of his wealth had vanished.

Initial proceedings launched by Puech against Freymond in Geneva failed. He then turned to the French courts in 2023, a move that has once again drawn scrutiny to LVMH’s historic dealings with the Hermès heir.

LVMH says it was forced to respond because allegations linking the company and Arnault to the missing shares continue to appear in court filings despite being, in its view, entirely unfounded. In a counter-filing this month, Puech’s lawyers argued that it is too soon to absolve LVMH, stating that any liability should be determined by the ongoing criminal investigation.

LVMH uses its new filing to outline, for the first time, its account of the strategy that led it to work with Puech and Freymond in the 2000s.

According to the company, Freymond first approached Godé in 2001 with a proposal to forge an alliance with Puech. LVMH says the Hermès heir was frustrated by his lack of influence within the family-controlled luxury group and was seeking a greater role in its governance.

Crucially, LVMH argues that its objective was never to acquire Puech’s stake. Instead, the company says it hoped to form a joint shareholder bloc with Puech to influence Hermès’ strategy and potentially win over other family members.

Acquiring Puech’s shares would have been “the opposite” of the strategy discussed, LVMH said. Puech was valuable precisely because he still owned his historic stake and could serve as an “indispensable” partner in building a unified shareholder front.

Freymond and Puech met Arnault and Godé on several occasions over the years, including at Château d’Yquem, the storied Bordeaux vineyard owned by LVMH.

LVMH said Freymond cultivated close relationships with members of the Hermès family to help secure their shares. In 2007, the company said, Freymond informed LVMH that a large block of Hermès stock was about to hit the market, threatening to sell it to a rival unless LVMH acted quickly.

LVMH says that warning prompted it to establish the equity-swap structures through which banks accumulated shares on its behalf, allowing LVMH to defer a decision on taking direct ownership. More than two years later, LVMH unwound those swaps, revealing its surprise stake in Hermès.

LVMH argues that Freymond was fully aware of its strategy to build an alliance with Puech. If he included Puech’s shares among those sold to the company without its knowledge, the filing says, such conduct “would have represented a breach of loyalty not only toward Puech but also toward LVMH.”

Freymond, who had been accused by several former clients of siphoning away their assets, was questioned by French investigating magistrates in July 2025.

During the interviews, he acknowledged for the first time that he had sold a substantial portion of Puech’s Hermès shares to LVMH in 2008, after years of denial. He claimed, however, that he had acted with Puech’s full knowledge and consent—an account Puech has vehemently denied.

Two weeks later, Freymond was struck and killed by a train near his home in the Swiss Alps. Swiss authorities concluded that his death was a suicide.