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I’m here to see how this plays out… I think he’s more than a “gardener” IYKWIM.
I watched the Netflix series on the Bettancourt family. That guy was still able to keep millions of dollars worth of cash and gifts…
 
Just to note that billions of € worth of equity in a privately held company is worth nothing if you can't liquidate it, and any selling of said shares would almost certainly be up to the controlling shareholders. So, if you're in your 80s and you just want to give a giant middle finger to your estranged family, this is certainly the move, but it is not remotely the same as billions in cash. Or bags ;)
 
If that gardener is wise, he will keep the houses and cash he already got, maybe receive a little more cash, but reject that poisoned inheritance. First, as I stated before, I don't think it will work, but in the meantime (while the others fight it off) or should it work, you're signing up for a life of cloak and dagger, always looking under the bed, never trusting any drink, always suspicious of any noise, jumping at your own shadow, forever sh*tting the pants etc. Come on! Full paranoia!
We're talking Game of Thrones sh*t. Is is really worth it?
I don't think so...
 
Stupid question here: he’s a Swiss citizen, what recourse do the French branches of the family have?

It will depends on where the assets are located, under which jurisdiction, what catgories assets... Real estate is usually under local jurisdiction, other will be under the jurisdiction of the fiscal residence of the person... Then there is succession law itself, depending on where the will is written, and then where the guy dies, and then there will be international law once people start fighting back...

I know cases where some judge abroad issued judgements or whatever, but the local people simply sat on the assets and never obeyed, following local practices. And there is nothing you can do from the outside in. Locally foreign judgements have no jurisdiction.

It has the potential to be a real mess... People can fight for generations...
And this one will turn political of course as Hermès will be viewed as a strategic company or "fleuron" in France. They'll never allow BS to happen.
 
Stupid question here: he’s a Swiss citizen, what recourse do the French branches of the family have?
Not a stupid question at all, but they probably don't have any recourse. He can do what he wants with his estate unless they can prove incompetence, but why would they bother? The existing family group holds enough control to direct the corporation as they like.

If this were a block of voting shares big enough to sway corporate decisionmaking...then they'd be more worried. Honestly best move for the adopted gardener would be to eventually sell back to the family and take the cash, but one would assume the terms of inheritance prevent that.
 
Not a stupid question at all, but they probably don't have any recourse. He can do what he wants with his estate unless they can prove incompetence, but why would they bother? The existing family group holds enough control to direct the corporation as they like.

If this were a block of voting shares big enough to sway corporate decisionmaking...then they'd be more worried. Honestly best move for the adopted gardener would be to eventually sell back to the family and take the cash, but one would assume the terms of inheritance prevent that.
That’s what I thought but now I’m a bit perplexed as to what’s really going on here. Is this move by Puech supposed to reveal some ‘we can’t possibly have the gardener in the boardroom’ class prejudice on the part of the family? And is that really a news flash? And these ‘upstarts’ were 19th century tradespeople, not descendants of Burgundian Dukes which I presume (incorrectly?) is what really matters in that rarefied air….
 
Came across this interesting article today. It's his money and he can do what he likes with it...

The heir to luxury retail empire Hermès is reportedly planning to adopt his 51-year-old gardener so he can pass on his $11 billion fortune

The billionaire grandson of the founder of fashion giant Hermès is reportedly planning to adopt his 51-year-old gardener as part of an audacious and acrimonious succession plan.

In a plot reminiscent of the movie Annie with a highly unusual twist, 80-year-old Nicolas Puech is in the process of making his “former gardener and handyman” from a “modest Moroccan family” his legal child, Swiss publication Tribune de Genève reported last week.

The Frenchman, who is unmarried and childless, is a fifth-generation heir of Thierry Hermès, who founded the luxury fashion house in 1837 by opening a workshop in Paris.

The brand has since grown to a valuation of $220 billion and is now the third-largest publicly listed company in France.

Puech—who reportedly owns around 5% or 6% of the company—is worth between 9 billion and 10 billion Swiss francs (between $10.3 billion and $11.4 billion), according to Swiss outlet Bilanmagazine, putting him among the richest people in Switzerland.

The billionaire is already in the process of passing on that wealth to his former gardener and has hired a legal team to take him through the process, Tribune de Genève reported. He is also reportedly in the process of rearranging the benefactors of his estate.

The gardener, whose identity is unknown, is reported to be married to a Spanish woman with whom he has two children. Tribune de Genève reports that he could inherit half of Puech’s wealth.

Italian outlet Sky TG24 reported that Puech had already handed the 51-year-old the keys to a property in Marrakesh, Morocco, and a villa in Montreux, Switzerland, worth a combined total of €5.5 million ($5.9 million).

A representative for Hermès didn’t reply to Fortune’s request for comment.

An unusual heir

Looking at Puech’s history with the company his grandfather founded, it becomes slightly clearer why he is looking to an unconventional subject to pass on his wealth.

In 2014 the Hermès heir quit the company’s supervisory board in acrimonious circumstances after fashion rival LVMH acquired 23% of Hermès as part of a hostile takeover bid, largely by stealth.

Puech’s other family members set up a holding company with their shares to block a takeover by LVMH, though Puech held on to his stake.

LVMH and founder Bernard Arnault later agreed to divest their shares in the company and agreed not to buy any more for five years. However, the feud appears to have caused unmendable wounds between Puech and his other family members.

“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 Networkreported 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.”

Great wealth transfer

Puech makes up a wider pool of billionaires planning to pass on $5.2 trillion of wealth in the coming decades as part of the great wealth transfer, according to a study by Swiss bank UBS.

Those billionaires typically split their wealth between their offspring and philanthropic causes, while many make arrangements to hand over control of their lucrative companies to family members.

Puech, though, appears to be the first to have thrown out that convention in favor of someone who seemingly made quite the impression on his life.

There are obstacles to Puech’s audacious plans to hand over his fortune to a former gardener via adoption. While not an anomaly, the adoption of an adult is extremely rare, and the requirements for doing so in Switzerland, where Puech resides, are complex.

An adult can adopt another adult if they lived with them for at least a year when the adoptee was still a minor, according to ch.ch.

The billionaire heir also has to overcome a philanthropic commitment. Puech is understood to have previously pledged his fortune as part of a succession pact to Isocrates, a foundation created by him in 2011 that is dedicated to tackling misinformation.

In order to walk back his pledge to Isocrates, Puech may face a brutal fight akin to that which he had with his family members a decade ago.

Speaking to Tribune de Genève, Isocrates’s secretary general Nicolas Borsinger called Puech’s plan a “sudden and unilateral annulment of a succession agreement, done through an act that must be considered null and void.”

Indeed, Sky TG24 reports that the adoption is seen as a legal workaround to stop the foundation from contesting parts of Puech’s will.

This is the start of a golden age mystery alright.
 
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