Carat‘The rumours were true’: Bennahmias tried to buy De Bethune
The former Audemars Piguet chief confirms a failed run at the 500-piece independent now owned by The 1916 Company, just as DB25 Starry Varius results run $42,000 to $135,500 at auction, consistently over estimate.
§1The parlor question, settled.
François-Henri Bennahmias, the man who ran Audemars Piguet through its Royal Oak supercycle, has confirmed what the trade whispered for two years. "The rumours were true - I was trying to buy De Bethune", he told WatchPro, adding that the negotiations failed for several reasons and consumed a great deal of time. The admission settles one of independent watchmaking's favorite parlor questions and opens a better one: why does everyone with money keep circling this particular 500-piece brand?
§2Why everyone circles it.
De Bethune is the connoisseur's independent almost by design. Founded in 2002 by master watchmaker Denis Flageollet and partners, the Sainte-Croix house produces fewer than 500 pieces a year and manufactures its own hairsprings in-house, a capability perhaps a half-dozen companies on earth share. Its titanium bridges, blued-steel starry dials and floating lugs are among the most recognizable design signatures in modern horology, and the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève has decorated it repeatedly, from the Aiguille d'Or in 2011 to the Men's Complication prize in 2024.
The brand Bennahmias could not buy belongs to The 1916 Company, which inherited it through WatchBox's 2021 investment. The current structure gives it executive chairman Justin Reis and, as of this year, chief executive Antoine Pin, the former TAG Heuer and Bulgari watch boss who replaced long-serving CEO Pierre Jacques. It is a heavyweight management bench for a company whose annual output would fit in one modest shipping crate, which tells you what the owners believe the name is worth.
The most bullish fact in this story is the failed deal itself.
§3The tape agrees.
The secondary market is making the same argument in numbers. Recent auction results for the DB25 Starry Varius have ranged from roughly $42,000 to $135,500, consistently above estimate, and the brand's auction record stands at $190,500 for a 2018 DB28 Kind of Blue Tourbillon, set in 2023. For a maker with barely two decades of history and microscopic production, that is the profile of a future blue chip, and investors who watched F.P. Journe values multiply tenfold have learned to move early.
The most bullish fact in this story is the failed deal itself. When the executive who scaled AP to four billion francs tries to buy your 500-piece atelier and cannot close, the asset is either overpriced or underloved by no one, and in watchmaking those are the same thing. De Bethune's owners are holding, its auction results are climbing, and the last Résonance-era independent with this much in-house credibility that came properly to market rewrote the price book.
Watch the starry dials; the smart money already is.
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