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Jessica Mendoza
Our colleague Nick Kostoff covers European luxury brands. Nice beat if you can get it. And a while back he took one of the most beautiful road trips you can imagine through the Swiss Alps to a small village called Ferre.
Nick Kostoff
Yeah, so Ferre is a tiny hamlet. There's maybe 12 houses. How I got there was I got a train from Paris to Geneva and then I drove through the Alps. Really, really beautiful drive. And then you leave kind of the last town, drive another 3km and then you get to ferry. So it's very, very remote. It's incredibly beautiful. I can't overstate how beautiful the views are from.
Jessica Mendoza
But Nick wasn't there to sightsee.
Nick Kostoff
I was there to find a guy called Nicolas Puesch who is a fifth generation heir to the Hermes fortune.
Jessica Mendoza
Nicolas Pues is the great, great grandson of Thierry Hermes, the founder of the French luxury goods company. For years, Pues was Hermes biggest shareholder and one of the richest men in Europe. And then two years ago, PwES made a jaw dropping claim. He was out of money, broke, skint. As for his Hermes shares, shares which today would be worth about $15 billion, he claimed he didn't own them anymore and he didn't know who did. The shares were quite simply gone. What was your reaction when you first heard that this multi billion dollar fortune had gone missing?
Nick Kostoff
I mean, I think like wtf? Yeah, wtf? Exactly, exactly. Wtf? Like yeah. My first reaction was I better look into this.
Jessica Mendoza
Nick's been looking into it for over a year now, trying to figure out what happened to Nicola Pwesch's lost fortune. The search has taken him deep into the rarefied world of Europe's super rich. And the story he's uncovered involves a beloved handyman, a trusted financial advisor and one of the biggest corporate rivalries in luxury. Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, November 25th. Over the next two episodes, we're going to tell you the story of Hermes heir Nicola Pwech's missing billions and what became of them. This is part one.
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Jessica Mendoza
What do you think of when you hear Hermes?
Nick Kostoff
I think of the absolute pinnacle of luxury. Hermes is for many people, the ultimate status symbol. I think of Birkin bags.
Jessica Mendoza
It has since been one of the world's most exclusive and expensive fashion accessories.
Nick Kostoff
Famous Kelly bags, silk scarves, elegant scarves.
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Ties and handbags, all meticulously made.
Nick Kostoff
It is, you know, top, top tier luxury.
Jessica Mendoza
But here's something you might not think of. Hermes is one of the top five biggest companies in Europe by market cap. It's bigger than the industrial giant Siemens, bigger than banks like Santander and Deutsche bank, bigger than Airbus and Spotify and Novo Nordisk. That's right, handbags are bigger than Ozempic. And this has all been a huge boon for Hermes heirs. Given the company's been around for 188 years. There are a lot of them.
Nick Kostoff
There are now more than 200 heirs to Hermes, so the family has split into three branches, the Guerant du Mar and the Poche.
Jessica Mendoza
Of those heirs, one of the most notable was Nicola Puex. He would end up holding about 6% of the entire company, 6 million shares of Hermes.
Nick Kostoff
Nicolas Pues became the largest individual shareholder in Hermes because he inherited shares first of all from his mother and then he inherited an extra 1% from his sister. And so he ends up with this enormous fortune. Puesh himself. How to describe him? I mean, early in his career he did various things. He worked for an ad agency. He started a couture house with a stylist that went bust pretty quickly. He had a short stint as a water skiing instructor.
Jessica Mendoza
Okay, why not?
Nick Kostoff
Why not? Yeah, exactly. And then from the mid-90s or so, he has lived entirely off Hermes dividends.
Jessica Mendoza
With those dividends, Pues built a comfortable life. He spent most of the 1980s on a farm he owns in Spain, tending to his horses. One of the only photos we have of Pues shows a heavyset man with snow white hair holding a beautiful white horse by a lead in the early 2000s PWES began spending more time in Switzerland renovating a massive chalet in Ferrey.
Nick Kostoff
And that's really how he spent his days.
Jessica Mendoza
Pues is 82 now. He never married and doesn't have any children, so there would be no one to inherit his multi billion dollar fortune. Instead, Pues made plans to leave it to a foundation he set up.
Nick Kostoff
He'd hired some people to build it up and when you consider that the foundation was expecting a gift worth some 15 billion, you know, they were really building this thing out, expecting to have an enormous amount of money to spend.
Jessica Mendoza
It seemed like Pwesh's future was settled. And then came a series of seemingly sudden moves. Clues that not all was right with the Hermes Air. One clue came in the form of a letter. In 2023, Pwech wrote to the head of his foundation. At the top of the letter he wrote in French cancellation, inheritance agreement.
Nick Kostoff
He sends a letter basically saying, listen, I've decided not to leave my fortune to you for various reasons including the fact that I thought you guys could protect my fortune, but actually you can't, so no more money for you.
Jessica Mendoza
The head of the foundation was shocked. He hadn't seen it coming. And he wasn't the only one to be summarily written off like this. A year earlier, Puesch had sent another letter, seemingly out of the blue.
Nick Kostoff
He addressed it to his financial advisor. It's a guy called Eric Fremont. Eric Fremont had total power over Prech's finances for Many, many years. 25 years.
Jessica Mendoza
Fremont served Switzerland's elite and was close to the Hermes family. He'd managed Pesh's financial life for decades and Pwes considered him a friend. But in this letter, Pwesh fired Fremont with no explanation.
Nick Kostoff
The Fremont letter basically says, thank you for your service, but I don't, you know, goodbye. Goodbye. Yeah, exactly, Nick.
Jessica Mendoza
Firing your longtime financial advisor, pulling out of your own foundation. These were surprising moves. But to Nick they were less surprising in light of a rumor that had started going around that Pwech was claiming to have lost his entire fortune. Last year, Nick wrangled an interview with that fired financial advisor, Eric Fremont. Nick wanted to get Fremont's perspective on what might be going on with the Hermes Air.
Nick Kostoff
Yeah, so this was a meeting that took place. We were in a hotel near Geneva airport. So we were, you know, in a kind of quiet spot of a hotel lobby.
Jessica Mendoza
The man who walked in was about pues age thin with white floppy hair and dark caterpillar eyebrows.
Nick Kostoff
Fremont is an interesting character. So I mean he's obviously very smartly dressed. He comes in, he's got neatly combed hair, nice suit. He doesn't have a particular aura. He's not particularly charismatic. He really gives off an air of fragility that is almost disarming. But sensitive. Like sensitive, fragile. That was my impression of Eric Fremont.
Jessica Mendoza
And Fremont had a wild story to tell about his former employer. I've told you that Pwes isn't married and doesn't have children, but he didn't live alone.
Nick Kostoff
What he did have was a handyman and his handyman's wife and their children.
Jessica Mendoza
Pues had grown exceptionally close to his live in handyman, a guy named Jadiel Boutroc and his wife Maria Paz. And according to Fremond, the two were key to understanding what was going on with the Hermes heir, which Fremond said was the Hermes shares weren't actually missing. Pues was lying. He still had the shares and he was scheming to leave them to his handyman.
Nick Kostoff
So Fremont's story was that Puesch wants to leave his fortune to his handyman gardener. The problem is that he has agreed to leave it to his foundation. And legally, in Switzerland, once you agree to leave your fortune, for example, to a foundation, you can't go back on that unless it's to give it, for example, to a child or somebody you're related to.
Jessica Mendoza
Pweche's solution to this problem, according to Fremond, was to try to formally adopt his handyman as his son. In Fremond's telling, this adoption would be the culmination of years of manipulation by the handyman and his wife.
Nick Kostoff
He says that they have a hold over Pwesh, that Pwesh is a vulnerable old man, that he was isolated by Covid and that these guys, the handyman gardener and his wife, has got their claws into him and are basically manipulating him to leave his fortune to them. That was his story.
Jessica Mendoza
Fremont didn't just make his case to Nick. He filed a report to a Swiss welfare agency claiming that the handyman and his wife were taking advantage of Pwych. He said Pwych had gifted the couple multiple properties, including a home in Switzerland. Pwesh's lawyer called the allegations absurd, adding that the gifted properties would still only constitute about 1% of Pwesh's fortune. The report was ultimately dismissed. Nick had heard Fremond's version of events, but what about Pwech's? What was his side of the story? After the break, Nick tracks down the Hermes heir. Foreign.
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Nick Kostoff
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Jessica Mendoza
Nick drove for hours through the Swiss Alps to the tiny hamlet of Ferre because he wanted to know what Nicola Pues made of all of this. What did the Hermes heir think had happened to his $15 billion fortune? It turned out Pwesh wasn't hard to find.
Nick Kostoff
It's pretty obvious which one his house is because it's absolutely huge and all the other houses are normal size. And so I walked up to the door, as I knocked on the door, he came round the side of the house and he was leaving to get in a car with a woman.
Jessica Mendoza
So you don't have a lot of time. He's clearly leaving. What did you ask him?
Nick Kostoff
I mean, my first question, to be honest, was, did you have a nice summer? Which was not. Which was not what I'd driven like eight or nine hours for. But I figured maybe if I just get him talking, you know, maybe he'll become chatty, I think. Did you have a nice summer? He said yes and carried on walking. So I think it was in French I said something like that, but basically meaning like, where are these shares? Yeah, where are the shares, Mr. Puesh? And unsurprisingly, he didn't answer me. Madame.
Jessica Mendoza
Monsieur Pwesh. Nick never got a real interview with Pwesh. Pwesh's lawyer called the whole thing a quote, murky affair and declined to comment in depth. But Nick was able to get a picture of Pwesh's thinking from lawsuits the Air filed over the years and from conversations with people close to him. Here's what Nick gathered. According to Pwesh, the whole thing likely started decades ago, back in the early 2000s, when Hermes found itself In a knockdown fight with another big name in luxury, a company called lvmh. Talk to me about lvmh.
Nick Kostoff
So LVMH is the world's biggest luxury company. It's a conglomeration of about 75 brands that go from Dior to Louis Vuitton to Celine to Tag Heuer to Moet to Hennessy. I mean, walk down fifth Avenue in New York or Rodeo Drive or Motesando in Japan or, or Hong Kong or whatever. A lot of these stores will be owned by LVMH.
Jessica Mendoza
LVMH's name is itself a mashup of various luxury brands. Louis Vuitton, Moet, Hennessy. And at the very top of this many headed luxury Hydra is one of the richest men in the world, Bernard Arnault.
Nick Kostoff
He has many nicknames. The Lord of Logos, the Pope of Fashion. The one he hates the most is the wolf in cashmere. And Arnault is a capitalist. You know, he was schooled in American capitalism in New York in the 80s and he would go and acquire brands from families.
Jessica Mendoza
Over the years, Arnault built LVMH up from a handful of brands into a juggernaut with about 75 different labels.
Nick Kostoff
I think some families who want to sell their brands see him as a safe pair of hands. He's very good at developing brands, making them bigger. He's got amazing attention to detail, but he's also so he's also very tough. And if he wants a brand, he will try and acquire it.
Jessica Mendoza
And back in 2001, the brand Arnault was interested in was Hermes. Arnault wanted to build a sizable stake in the company. Because Hermes is still largely owned by descendants like Pwesh, this would mean buying up shares from individual members of the Hermes family. And so LVMH reached out to someone with close ties to the Hermes clan, someone they thought could help. That person was Nicola Puesh's financial advisor, Eric Fremont.
Nick Kostoff
So according to Fremont, someone in touch or working with LVMH reached out to him and essentially said, would you be willing to help us build up a stake, an investment in Hermes? And Fremont says, sure.
Jessica Mendoza
Fremont detailed his work with LVMH in a legal claim he later made against Arnault and the company. He says he worked for years building up Arnault's Hermes stake. This was a delicate operation. Sure, some Hermes family members might be willing to sell some stock and cash out, but Hermes, the company most definitely did not want its biggest rival becoming its biggest shareholder. To avoid triggering alarm bells At Hermes, the share buying scheme would have to be kept a secret. And it worked. With Fremont's help, LVMH built its hermes stake to 14%. Hermes was none the wiser until 2010, when Arnault finally revealed his secret stake.
Nick Kostoff
He decides, okay, I'm going to pull the trigger. And he announces to the market, unbeknownst to Hermes, that he has a 14% stake, which is going to rise to 17% in the coming days. And so Hermes is stunned.
Jessica Mendoza
Yeah, they're all like, wait, wait a minute, when did this happen?
Nick Kostoff
Yeah, wait a minute, when did this happen? And obviously he's been working on it for a decade. And so the question at this point is, where has he got this 17%.
Jessica Mendoza
To build a 17% stake? Hermes knew that Arnault must have bought shares from Hermes family members. It was the only way. So who had sold? Many angry fingers pointed at one of the company's biggest shareholders, Nicola Puesch. But Puesch denied it. He said he hadn't sold any of his inherited shares to Arnault.
Nick Kostoff
I still have my 6%.
Jessica Mendoza
So he's like, it's not me.
Nick Kostoff
Yeah, not me. He's like, it's not me. And Puex's belief is, and he's asked about this by investigators for the French stock market authorities and others, he's saying, I still have my 6%, so it.
Jessica Mendoza
Must be somebody else, basically, is what.
Nick Kostoff
They'Re thinking, must be somebody else. Although at this point, a lot of people are, let's say, suspicious.
Jessica Mendoza
Why was this a mystery? Like, don't companies usually just know who their biggest shareholders are? Can't you just check who owns the shares?
Nick Kostoff
I mean, usually, yes, but Pwesh owned bearer shares. Bearer shares are kind of like cash in a way. They're not registered.
Jessica Mendoza
Unlike normal shares, bearer shares don't need to be registered to a specific person or business. They're owned by whoever physically holds or bears the piece of paper, thus the name. And like cash, they're more anonymous. People close to LVMH say not even the company knew for sure whose shares they'd bought. The finger pointing went on for years. Hermes and many members of Pwych's family believed he'd sold them out. Pwesch denied it over and over again. And then in 2023, Nicola Pwesch filed a series of lawsuits against Eric Fremont in Switzerland and in France. The contents were explosive. In the lawsuits, Pwech accused his former financial advisor of massive fraud. He said his money was gone, his Hermes shares gone. As for what had happened to them, Pwes said he now suspected that Fremont had sold them years ago and the most likely buyer was lvmh. So he's saying that Fremont sold his shares without his permission? Essentially.
Nick Kostoff
Yeah, exactly. So he's basically saying, Fremont has stolen everything I have. And as part of the lawsuits, he lists a number of people who he believes that investigators should question. One of them is, of course, Bernard Arnault and lvmh. And he says, you know, if these guys should be questioned, their offices should be searched, their homes should be searched to see if they know anything about where my shares have ended up.
Jessica Mendoza
Right. Did my shares actually wind up at lvmh?
Nick Kostoff
Did my shares wind up at lvmh? Exactly. Exactly.
Jessica Mendoza
A spokesperson for Arnault and LVMH declined to comment. Nick spoke with Fremont, the former financial advisor, twice last year, once at that hotel in Geneva and a second time in Paris. He asked Fremont about Puesha's allegation. How did Fraymond respond to the allegation that he stole the shares?
Nick Kostoff
So he strongly disputed that allegation. He was, I would say, almost incensed. He certainly said he felt incredibly betrayed, that this was completely unfair, and that he had worked diligently and honestly for Puesch for 25 years, and that his allegations were completely crazy.
Jessica Mendoza
Accusations were flying, but who to believe? Was it the handyman Fremont? Pwesh himself? And then one day this past summer, Nick got a text from a source. Eric Fremont was dead. Tomorrow on the Journal. Finally, some answers. Have you solved the mystery?
Nick Kostoff
I'm further along than I was. Yes, I think I know what happened to the chaise. Yes.
Jessica Mendoza
And no, it wasn't the handyman. That's all for today. Tuesday, November 25th. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every Weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
Podcast: The Journal.
Hosts: Ryan Knutson & Jessica Mendoza
Date: November 25, 2025
This episode of The Journal explores the baffling disappearance of a $15 billion fortune belonging to Nicolas Puesch, an heir to the renowned luxury brand Hermès. The episode, led by reporters Jessica Mendoza and Nick Kostoff, investigates how Puesch lost his shares, the labyrinthine world of European luxury dynasties, and the constellation of characters caught in the intrigue—spanning family, trusted advisors, and corporate giants.
The hosts maintain a blend of intrigue, skepticism, and drama befitting a high-stakes financial whodunit, filled with memorable character sketches, corporate suspense, and surprising personal twists.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger:
Jessica Mendoza ([22:54]):
"And no, it wasn’t the handyman."
The investigation continues in Part 2, promising resolution to the mystery of the vanishing billions.
This summary captures the evolving mystery, the cast of characters, and the cutthroat world of luxury business intrigue as presented in The Journal’s engaging narrative style.