In 2018, the French business magazine Challenges put the fortune of the hundred or so Hermès heirs at €137.8bn², a figure backed up by Quartz³ and Bloomberg.⁴ The structure has barely changed since the IPO, and the family is still in charge, both in management and among the shareholders.

To understand how, you have to look at the company’s organisation chart.⁵⁶

Across the group, you find the 3 big families, born of the marriages of the three daughters, more or less everywhere.

1️⃣ Happy Families: Mr Guerrand, please…

Some call them the family’s high rollers, or even its eccentrics. To be fair, next to Puechs as soberly Protestant as the Seydoux, another old French business dynasty, the Guerrands come across as oddballs, with a lavish lifestyle and sometimes very showy spending. Within the group, you find:

• Olympia Guerrand, member of the supervisory board;
• Blaise Guerrand, member of the supervisory board;
• Julie Guerrand, sister of the above, member of the supervisory board;
• Édouard Guerrand, third sibling of the above, member of the management board of Emile Hermès;
• Wilfried Guerrand, chief information officer, distant cousin and indirect descendant, on the payroll for 30 years, and member of the executive committee.

This executive status also allows some of them to receive free shares.

In 2020, Wilfried gets 4,020 shares and Julie 1,000. The same year, Olympia transfers 305,712 shares (€210M), almost all the shares she owns, into the capital of one of her companies in Luxembourg.

In 2021, he exercises an option and then sells €2.7M worth of shares, then exercises a second option in 2023 to pocket nearly €4.5M.

This year, Wilfried again received 1,100 shares last May, which he passed on in two goes to his four children: 275 each in May (€629K apiece), and 175 each in August, which they all sold the very next day for €383K. Roughly a million in pocket money per child, this year alone.

At the end of 2023, Wilfried Guerrand held 10,147 shares, worth around €20.5M.⁷

2️⃣ Happy Families: Mr Dumas…

This is where you find the people who have been running the show for decades and who, according to the other families, make sure everyone else is kept out of the top jobs. Among them:

• Axel Dumas, executive chairman (gérant) of Hermès International;
• Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director, Axel’s cousin;
• Frédéric Dumas, member of the management board of Emile Hermès;
• Matthieu Dumas, member of the supervisory board and the remuneration committee;
• Alice Charbin, née Dumas, member of the management board of Emile Hermès;
• Sandrine Brekke, Jean-Louis Dumas’s daughter, member of the management board of Emile Hermès;
• Guillaume de Seynes, Émile’s great-grandson through the Dumas line, in charge of equity holdings;
• Éric de Seynes, former motorcycle racer and boss of Yamaha Motor Sport, chairman of the supervisory board.

All heirs of Jean-Louis Dumas, they share his urge to keep everything in-house. He had watched Patrick Guerrand, Jérôme’s brother, climb the ranks of the group, and did everything he could to push him out. In the end, a big cheque persuaded him to step down from senior management.

With the deal ready to be signed, Patrick tried to make amends, saying he had never seen himself as “his rival”. To which Jean-Louis replied:

“You’re right, we don’t box in the same weight class.”

Patrick walked out of the room, and the deal waited months before it was signed.

3️⃣ Happy Families: Mr Puech…

• Charles-Éric Bauer, grandson of Yvonne Hermès, Puech branch, member of the supervisory board;
• Capucine Bruet, member of the management board of Emile Hermès;
• Jean-Baptiste Puech, actor, member of the management board of Emile Hermès;
• Laurent Momméja, member of the management board of Emile Hermès;
• Renaut Momméja, already mentioned in the shareholder list, member of the supervisory board and the risk committee.

That’s what you call a family business, even if, unlike the Arnaults, the three-family triumvirate is not (or only barely) in operational management.