Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Bad mathematics

Gold stolen from watchmaker Rolex
AFP June 04, 2010

LUXURY Swiss watchmaker Rolex has been robbed of more than 15kg of gold - worth almost E15 million (US$21.83 million) - and a foundry worker has been taken into custody, a judicial official said overnight.


Rolex, whose status-symbol wristwatches cost several thousand dollars apiece, says the employee, a temp, admitted stealing 5kg of gold from the plant in Plan-les-Ouates, the official said.

The man's lawyer, Francois Canonica, said he has been detained and charged with theft and breach of trust, the ATS news agency reported.

"Whether he should be blamed for the extra 10 kilos remains an open question," said the lawyer. "It appears that the security system put in place by Rolex - supposing it has one - has shown its limitations," Mr Canonica said.


Oh boy... As they say, never let the truth spoil a perfectly good story.

Unfortunately this time the AFP got it wrong because 15Kg of gold is *not* worth 21 million dollars but only USD$ 576.000.

One can only hope that Swiss judge will do his maths before sentencing the poor idiot.

2 comments:

Lustre said...

Haha Nicko maybe the $21m reflects Rolex's markup?

Unknown said...

It's about economic opportunity costs - along your logic as to how the Swiss could turn 1kg of steel worth millions of dollars (instead of 'just' the spot commodity price) through value-adding by manufacturing gears with market values of ~$28 a piece.