Time passes, quarrels fade. Of the 6 children of Françis Puech and Yvonne Hermès, it is Agnès who tries to bring everyone back together. Nicolas becomes the (reluctant) public face of the family. Because he isn’t in H51, his Hermès shares put him on the list of French billionaires. €9.6bn in 2023, according to Forbes.
But is his fortune still there?
And this is where we enter another giant mess.
Because Nicolas is not exactly an ordinary man. Single, childless, fairly discreet, he has been a tax exile in Switzerland since the 90s, on the advice of a wealth manager, Eric Freymond.
Freymond is the one who helps Nicolas create Isocrate (listed as Fondation Nicolas Puech in the shareholder register). Nicolas puts part of his shares into it, then names it heir to the rest.
But at the end of 2023, the Swiss daily La Tribune de Genève reveals that Nicolas now wants to give his shares to his gardener, Jadil Butrak.10 Followed by another article on Christmas Eve explaining the war against Nicolas.11 According to two people close to him, the information leaked at Nicolas’s own wish.
In reality, these articles were a response to a report filed by Eric Freymond’s lawyer, who describes Nicolas as having been placed in “emotional isolation” by the gardener and his wife. The French weekly L’Express lists, without naming its sources, who were in fact Eric Freymond and his lawyers, the many expenses Nicolas Puech paid for the couple.12
In 2015, for example, Nicolas bought a villa in Marrakech on Jadil Butrak’s behalf: €1.575M. More than 50 properties were also handed over to the couple. Facts that inevitably bring to mind the relationship between the photographer François-Marie Banier and L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.
But the rift between Nicolas and Eric Freymond goes back to September 2022. The wealth manager refuses to make a €100M transfer to the couple. When Freymond insists, Nicolas fires him.
Six months later, he tells the Isocrate foundation that he is cancelling his donation, and therefore the contract. But the foundation, represented by its executive director Nicolas Borsinger, refuses. Created in 2011, the Fondation Nicolas Puech became the Fondation Isocrate in 2022, and its new articles drastically limit Nicolas’s role. A decision pushed hard by Eric Freymond.
To get round the problem, Nicolas wants to adopt Jadil Butrak: if he has an heir, the foundation gets nothing. And it would royally piss off Eric Freymond.
Nicolas even travels to Morocco to ask Jadil Butrak’s real parents for permission. And for them to give up their parental rights.
Case closed.