Heir to luxury retail empire 'Hermès' planning to pass his $11 billion fortune to 51-year-old gardener
World+Biz
The 80-year-old heir to the Hermès fortune, Nicolas Puech, is reportedly contemplating an unconventional method to distribute his wealth.
As reported by the New York Post, referencing information from the Swiss publication Tribune de Genève, Nicolas Puech is allegedly considering appointing his "former gardener and handyman," an undisclosed 51-year-old individual, as his heir, reports People.
Puech, who is unmarried and has no children of his own, stands to pass down billions of dollars of the Hermès fortune, currently valued at over $220 billion.
Reportedly holding between 5% and 6% ownership in the company, Puech's net worth is estimated to be between $10 billion and $11 billion. According to the Swiss publication, he is purportedly considering passing on half of this inheritance to his former gardener.
He is purportedly in the process of rearranging the beneficiaries of his estate and may choose to pass on the remainder of his money to other recipients.
According to Tribune de Genève, Puech has already begun the legal proceedings to make the man his heir. The unidentified man is reportedly of Moroccan descent, married to a woman from Spain and has a family of his own. He also stands to inherit property from Puech in Marrakesh, Morocco, and Montreux, Switzerland, valued at $5.9 million.
Puech, the fifth-generation heir of Thierry Hermès, who established the fashion house renowned for its Birkin bags in 1837 in Paris, departed the supervisory board in 2014 under strained circumstances when LVMH acquired a 23% stake in Hermès, as reported by Fortune.
"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."
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