LVMH signed 2002 deal to buy Hermès heir’s shares
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Luxury stores along a historic avenue in Paris, including a Louis Vuitton building. FILE PHOTO. |
Luxury group LVMH signed an agreement in 2002 to buy millions of Hermès shares from founding-family heir Nicolas Puech and other family members, according to legal documents reviewed in connection with a dispute over Puech’s missing fortune.
The agreement adds new detail to the long-running relationship between LVMH and Puech’s former wealth manager, Eric Freymond, who helped the luxury group build a major stake in Hermès more than two decades ago. LVMH has denied trying to acquire Puech’s shares against his wishes.
LVMH’s relationship with Freymond was extensive. Court records show that LVMH and a holding company belonging to chairman Bernard Arnault’s family paid Freymond’s wealth-management firm at least $20 million in commissions and fees between 2001 and 2009.
The newly reported 2002 agreement was negotiated through Freymond and signed on November 12 that year by Freymond and Pierre Godé, a longtime adviser to Arnault. It called for LVMH to purchase millions of Hermès shares from Puech and other heirs.
The proposed purchases were due to begin after the expected departure of Hermès chief executive Jean-Louis Dumas, who eventually retired in 2006. LVMH later said the agreement was put on hold while it sought to establish whether Freymond had authority to act for Puech.
LVMH said in a 2017 Swiss court filing that the agreement was never executed and that Godé could not establish Puech’s intentions regarding his Hermès shares. The company also said it never instructed Freymond to carry out the agreement and that the document was destroyed in late 2010.
Puech says he discovered that his Hermès shares were missing in 2022, after ending his relationship with Freymond. He later filed a lawsuit seeking €14 billion ($16 billion) in damages from those who may be found responsible, while French prosecutors separately investigated the disappearance of his fortune.
Puech’s inherited stake was about 6% of Hermès. At current share prices, that holding would be worth roughly $10 billion. His lawsuit names LVMH, Arnault and companies linked to Freymond as defendants.
LVMH has said buying Puech’s shares would not have made sense because its strategy at the time was to persuade him to join a shareholder group that could influence Hermès. Puech could have played such a role only if he retained his shares.
The documents reviewed for the case, however, show that LVMH signed the 2002 purchase agreement with Freymond shortly after beginning to build its position in Hermès. An LVMH spokesman declined to comment on the agreement or the payments to Freymond.
The origins of that relationship date to 2001, when Swiss lawyer Alexandre Montavon helped introduce Freymond to Godé. Freymond claimed to have links to Hermès family shareholders who wanted to sell shares, according to court records and testimony given to French prosecutors.
Montavon testified that Freymond proposed using Puech’s accounts as an intermediary for transactions involving shares owned by other Hermès heirs. The arrangement, according to his testimony, was intended to conceal LVMH as the buyer because some family shareholders might not have wanted to sell shares to a direct rival.
LVMH said in its 2017 filing that it had accumulated 4.9% of Hermès by 2002 with Freymond’s help. The company eventually disclosed a much larger position in October 2010, revealing that it held 17% of Hermès and triggering a bitter confrontation between the two luxury groups.
LVMH increased its Hermès stake to as much as 23% before the companies reached a settlement in 2014 under which LVMH agreed to sell its holdings.
The dispute over Puech’s shares remains unresolved. LVMH has never publicly established whether it ultimately acquired shares belonging to him, while Puech’s lawsuit and a parallel criminal investigation continue to examine what happened to his holding.
Montavon is also under investigation in France over whether he participated in the alleged misappropriation of Puech’s shares for LVMH’s benefit. Prosecutors have not charged him, and his lawyer has said Montavon denies wrongdoing and was never told that LVMH had acquired shares belonging to Puech.
Freymond died in July 2025 after being struck by a train in Switzerland while the investigation into Puech’s missing shares was underway. Swiss authorities investigated the death and concluded that it was suicide. Freymond had denied wrongdoing before his death.
In a separate legal dispute, Freymond had claimed that LVMH failed to properly compensate him for his work helping the company acquire Hermès shares. LVMH settled that case in 2019 for €10 million.
Hermès is largely controlled by members of its founding family, with more than 100 heirs from three family branches holding shares. Puech had one of the larger inherited positions among family members.
Hermès chief executive Axel Dumas said after Freymond’s death that he had long believed Puech no longer held his shares. He said he was waiting for the criminal investigation to conclude but did not believe the shares could be recovered.
The circumstances surrounding Puech’s missing fortune therefore remain unresolved, while the 2002 agreement provides further evidence of the dealings between LVMH and his former wealth manager during the period when LVMH was quietly building its position in Hermès
