Only Watch, the charity watch auction that was canceled last fall after a social media storm over financial and research transparency, has been rescheduled for May 10.
“Independent auditors have now audited and certified all our accounts for the last three years,” said Luc Pettavino, founder of the event that supports research into a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease that primarily affects boys — the disease that killed his son, Paul, in 2016.
As of earlier this month, more than 45 of the 66 unique watches that had been pledged to the original Nov. 5 auction are to be sold by Christie’s at the Palexpo exhibition center in Geneva. Some of them will come from Patek Philippe, Louis Vuitton, F.P. Journe, MB&F/H. Moser & Cie, TAG Heuer, Hublot, Chanel, Bulgari and Piaget, according to Mr. Pettavino and his daughter, Tess. Ms. Pettavino is the executive director of the Association Monégasque Contre les Myopathies, the organization in Monaco that organizes the event.
Over the years, the association website had detailed the companies’ research progress and that it had raised 110 million euros (about $119 million) since its founding in 2001. But it had never done audits (Monaco, where the association was based, announced in August 2023 that it would require audits of such organizations).
In September 2023, Instagram posts by a writer using the name Santalaura had questioned the association’s transparency, sparking a torrent of online comments and articles in the watch media that also raised concerns about the ownership of Synthena and SQY Therapeutics, which were created and supported by the association.
The reports show that €28.3 million was disbursed from 2021 through 2023: 90.2 percent to the two companies; 6.4 percent to other projects; and 3.4 percent in organizational and administrative costs.
The review was done by Christian Boisson, a Monegasque auditor who is also the managing partner of the Monaco branch of the accounting and advisory business Grant Thornton.
A statement from the association, sent last week to its medical partners and watch brands that have been auction donors, said an endowment fund was being created to hold all shares of both companies and that the association had created a strategic committee as well as a scientific committee involving its partners.
“This is a way to include more people that have desire be more involved,” Ms. Pettavino said during an interview.
SQY Therapeutics announced in March that French medical authorities had approved a second phase, six-month clinical trial of SQY51, a drug developed with association support.
“It is still too early to say if it works,” said Dr. Helge Amthor, who is leading the trial and is a professor of pediatric neurology at University Paris-Saclay. “With phase two, the aim is to see the long-term security in patients with higher doses.”
Several watch brands expressed their support for the auction’s re-emergence.
“It was good to take a step back to ask questions about transparency,” said Edouard Meylan, chief executive of H. Moser & Cie, which collaborated with MB&F on a minute repeater watch for the auction. “But a lot of the attacks were very biased and personal.”
“Now a good portion of the brands, especially the high-profile brands, are back — and we are happy to be part of the auction.”
