Richemont Sells Baume & Mercier to Italy After 38 Years

SOUTH AFRICA · LUXURY

Richemont has finished handing one of Geneva’s oldest names to new owners: the sale of Baume & Mercier, the 1830-founded watchmaker, to Italy’s Damiani Group closed on July 1 — ending 38 years in Johann Rupert’s luxury empire, with no price disclosed.

A 196-year-old maison changes hands

The completion, announced by both companies, followed the agreement signed on January 22 and the clearing of closing conditions. Damiani takes 100 percent of the watchmaker.

Baume & Mercier’s roots reach back to 1830, when the Baume family began selling watches in the Swiss Jura. It joined the group that became Richemont in 1988, the year the Rupert family assembled its luxury holdings.

Thirty-eight years is long enough to span whole eras of watchmaking, from quartz recovery to smartwatch shock. The maison survived them all under one owner.

Richemont will keep running operational services for the brand during a transition period. After that, one of the industry’s oldest names answers to Valenza rather than Geneva.

The maison’s catalogue spans lines like Clifton and Riviera, watches that furnished a century of first serious purchases. Accessible positioning was always the point — and eventually the problem.

Why Richemont let it go

Baume & Mercier held the entry level of the luxury watch market, selling accessible Swiss watchmaking in volumes the group’s grander houses never chase. Volume, though, is not what Richemont is optimising for.

The group has spent recent years concentrating on maisons with the strongest pricing power, led by Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, whose jewellery machines drive its profits. Softer entry-level demand made the choice easier.

Entry-level Swiss watchmaking has been squeezed for a decade, between smartwatches from below and insatiable demand for the great houses above. The middle is where margins go to shrink.

The move follows a record year for the group and continues a long pruning that has already seen it exit online retail. Fewer, stronger houses is now the whole strategy.

What Damiani gets

The Damiani Group is one of Italian jewellery’s family dynasties, founded in Valenza in 1924 and still run by the founding family. Its stable spans Damiani, Salvini, Bliss, Calderoni, the Rocca retail chain and the storied Venini glassworks of Murano.

Baume & Mercier gives it a true Swiss watchmaker with two centuries of heritage and a strong Italian footprint to build from. The group says it will grow the maison through its multi-brand distribution and selective mono-brand boutiques abroad.

Damiani has absorbed storied names before, folding in Venini’s glassworks and the Rocca retail chain. A watch maison is its boldest step up in scale and complexity.

For Italian luxury, it is a rare capture: watchmaking credibility usually costs far more than jewellery families can pay. No price was disclosed, which tells its own story about entry-level valuations.

Valenza, the buyer’s home town, is Italy’s goldsmithing capital, a district of workshops serving the world’s maisons. The deal moves a Geneva name into that ecosystem.

The Rupert angle

Richemont is controlled by South Africa’s Rupert family, and every reshaping of its portfolio echoes in Johannesburg as well as Geneva. Johann Rupert’s fortune, above 20 billion dollars on Bloomberg’s index, moves with the group’s shares.

South African investors track these moves through Remgro and Reinet as well as Richemont itself, the listed layers of the Rupert edifice. Portfolio discipline in Geneva reads as dividend security in Stellenbosch.

The message from this sale matches the one his results delivered: protect pricing power, shed dilution, let others fight for the entry level. It is the same logic that has kept Richemont among luxury’s most valuable groups through a soft cycle.

For staff and collectors, continuity is the near-term promise, with service and warranties running through the transition. Brand transitions in watchmaking are marathons measured in catalogues, not press releases.

Baume & Mercier leaves with its heritage intact and a committed owner. Luxury’s consolidation, for once, produced a tidy ending on both sides.

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