Baume & Mercier Watches Lose Their CEO

by Ariel Adams (RSS feed)
Sep 24th 2009 at 7:02AM

What is it, resign as CEO season? Just the other day I wrote about how A. Lange & Sohne lost their CEO, and now the same is happening to Swiss watch brand Baume & Mercier. I still know them by their "original" name "Baume et Mercier." Guess that "&" was put in there for us Americans. These resignations are starting to look awfully fishy if you ask me.

Michel Nieto, the CEO of Baume & Mercier just called it quits after being at Baume & Mercier since 2002. Just like A. Lange & Sohne, Baume & Mercier is part of the Richemont Group, and just like A. Lange & Sohne's loss of their CEO Fabian Krone, Richemont Group identified the reason for Nieto's resignation as a "strategic disagreement." Not that I don't believe PR speak, but either Richemont is handing out a canned response or we are going to see a major change in the organization of the group's brands in the coming months. I can't speculate if this is good or bad, but I anticipate change is 'ah comin' in the luxury watch world. Aside from the Swatch Group, Richemont Group is the largest collection of luxury watch brands.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Tags: baume mercier, BaumeMercier, ceo, michel nieto, MichelNieto, resign, richemont group, RichemontGroup, watch