Thursday, April 2, 2009

Did Madoff dupe Rolex?


On December 17 we had this news from Bloomberg:

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Rolex Group, the Swiss watchmaker, said Chief Executive Officer Patrick Heiniger resigned for “personal” reasons after 16 years in the post.

Heiniger will leave Rolex at the end of the year, the Geneva-based company said in a statement late yesterday. Separately, Rolex today denied a L’Agefi report that the company may have lost 1 billion Swiss francs ($900 million) invested with Bernard Madoff, the U.S. money manager charged with fraud.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aVcpPWU22T08&refer=home

Rolex of course denied any "implication" with Madoff. Implication and loss are two very different things!

Now today, Zero Hedge picked up on the Rolex story again:

Amid BASELWORLD 2009 drawing to a close, “The World Watch and Jewellery Show” (their funny spelling, not ours), rumors abound for perhaps its biggest showcase, the self-crowned “800-lb. Gorilla” Rolex. It seems not only did the fallen financier Bernard Madoff have a penchant for ripping-off golf buddies, club cohorts- the rich, the famous, the charitable and anonymous alike; he also cheated their wrists. (more here...)
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/04/madoff-rolex-connection.html

Heiniger's replacement was Bruno Meier, who was head of the Risk Management Unit of Swiss Bank Zurcher Kantonalbank.

A banker needed to run Rolex?

Don't they sell watches?

Now you know the Swiss definition of "implicate!"

No comments: