Yesterday, Movado (MOV) announced that its longtime Chairman and CEO, Gedalio Grinberg, had died on Sunday, which reminded me of this agreement that we spotted in an 8K filed just before the Christmas break when all sorts of stuff was buried.

While it’s fairly common to include survivor benefits, especially for a founder of a company, the timing and the scope of the benefits — the agreement calls for $600K in “retirement income” for the first year and then $500K for the rest of Sonia Grinberg’s life — does seem a bit generous, especially in light of Movado’s recent earnings and the overall malaise in the luxury market. Then again, Grinberg’s son is Chairman and CEO of the company.

There’s also an interesting side-note here about the problem with relying on Internet headlines. When I was researching this post, one of the top headlines that came up in Google Finance said, “Movado under probe”. But when you click on the story, you realize that it’s about some rap singer named Mavado and has nothing to do with the watch company. It’s simply a case of a bad headline that got picked up by Google’s bot. But at a time when most of us are doing lots of skimming, it’s just another reminder to be careful out there. UPDATE: Looks like this has been removed, but the cached version is here.

Posted in Buried treasure, The family business Tags: 8Ks, pre-holiday filings

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