Sir Jim Ratcliffe has joined a swath of wealthy individuals who have decided to stop flaunting their luxury watches in London as thousands get stolen every year.
A stubborn rise in watch robberies has scared Londoners from showing off their timepieces, and Ratcliffe, who regularly works in the city, has become the most high-profile individual to declare a change in behavior when he’s walking in the capital.
“I can’t wear a watch in London, and I just need to be a bit wary, a bit careful,” Ratcliffe told the Sunday Times.
Ratcliffe, one of the wealthiest people in the U.K., recounted a murder over a Rolex picked up on Ineos’s CCTV cameras at the group’s headquarters in Knightsbridge.
“He died in a pool of blood because somebody tried to take his Rolex and he resisted. About a year ago we had three guys in hoodies, with machetes, right outside the office, opposite Harrods.”
The Ineos CEO and minority owner of Manchester United blamed police officers for failing to adequately deter criminals.
“We don’t have enough prison space. I mean, this didn’t just happen. We’ve been talking about the prisons being overcrowded for 10 years.”
More than 6,800 watches were reported stolen last year, an increase from more than 6,000 in 2022. Since 2018, some 43,000 watches have been stolen in the capital through burglaries, robberies, and thefts.
The wealthy boroughs of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea routinely rank among the highest for robberies.
Robbers often target people wearing Patek Phillipe and Rolexes, which sell for a high value on the secondhand market, by offering prospective victims drugs or access to sex workers outside nightclubs before luring them to an alleyway to carry out a robbery.
Sting operations
Ratcliffe is one of many wealthy individuals who appear to have shunned flaunting their watches in public for fear of becoming a victim.
Valuations for secondhand watches have dipped more than 20% in the last two years, according to the Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks the price of the 50 most-traded watches.
The decline is largely the result of traders who piled into the market during the COVID-19 pandemic opting to invest elsewhere for better returns.
However, the violent theft of watches may also be contributing to falling valuations.
In a bid to halt an increase in robberies, Met police officers carried out a series of sting operations against watch thieves in London in 2022 and 2023, going undercover as potential targets of theft while wearing luxury timepieces.
The two operations in 2022 and 2023 came after 300 watches worth a total of £4 million were stolen between April and September 2022.
One officer would wander alone in a Westminster street at night before being approached by a group of men. Other undercover officers nearby would then jump in once a robbery ensued.
The Met says these stings have led to a reduction in watch thefts in Westminster.
Editor’s note: A version of this story was first published on Fortune.com on August 2024.
