Ferdinando Brachetti Peretti — watch collection

About Ferdinando Brachetti Peretti’s watch collection

Ferdinando Brachetti Peretti is an Italian entrepreneur best known as the President and CEO of the API Group, one of Italy's largest privately held energy conglomerates. The company operates across petroleum refining, fuel distribution, and renewable energy, making Brachetti Peretti one of the more consequential figures in the European energy sector. Beyond his industrial role, he is also recognized as a prominent collector — of art, cars, and, as our cameras have confirmed, serious horology.

The Ferdinando Brachetti Peretti watch collection, based on what we have documented, points firmly toward early Audemars Piguet Royal Oak complications. He has been photographed wearing a vintage Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar in stainless steel, reference 25654ST, with a silver dial. This piece traces back to the second generation of Royal Oak perpetual calendars, derived from the original 1983 reference 5554 — a model that married Gérald Genta's integrated bracelet architecture with a full perpetual calendar movement. The 25654ST is not a watch that turns up at retail; it surfaces through specialist dealers and major auction houses, and even then, rarely in well-preserved condition.

The choice of a stainless steel perpetual calendar from this era says something concrete about where Brachetti Peretti's horological interests lie. He is not gravitating toward current production or limited-edition releases — he is going back to a period when Audemars Piguet was still working out how to put a grand complication inside the Royal Oak case. For a collector of his standing, that context appears to matter more than novelty.