THE wrist of Klaus Kleinfeld, one of Germany’s top businessmen, looked strangely naked yesterday as the country chortled over the mystery of his disappearing Rolex.

The clunky £2,500 watch was apparently airbrushed out of the official photograph of the newly appointed head of Siemens so as not to offend the German public or his workers.

A day after he took over officially as chief executive of the huge electronics group last week, Siemens announced plans for 1,350 redundancies, 600 of them in Germany. It was not the moment, Herr Kleinfeld’s image advisers determined, to flaunt his bling.

The incident underlines how nervous German business has become as it tries to gear up for Asian and East European competition. Wolfgang Clement, the Economics Minister, said that unemployment is likely to touch five million for the first time in modern times. The figure is due to be announced tomorrow and big business and politicians are battening down the hatches.

This anxiety is being channelled on to the watch of Herr Kleinfeld. The country is engaged, with unusual hilarity, in a version of spot the difference. Judith Egelhof, of the Munich-based public relations company Publicis, said: “We changed the photograph digitally in line with Herr Kleinfeld’s wishes. He didn’t have time for a second photo shoot.”

However, a Siemens spokesman, said that two sets of photographs were made, one with a Rolex and one without. “We decided, ultimately, that the watch was too dominant in the picture, that was an error made by the photographer.” The Rolex photographs had simply been withdrawn. Yet close examination of the two photographs, with and without watch, shows an identical pose and an identical background.

The Rolex Submariner functions 300 metres under the sea, which is probably where some of the press office wanted to be yesterday. The watch is a favourite of German businessmen because it is not as frequently counterfeited as other Rolex models. It also fits into the sporting image of the 46-year-old Herr Kleinfeld: running, skiing and tennis.

When he failed to run the New York marathon in under five hours, his normal time, he sent an e-mail to all Siemens employees in America explaining why he was off-form.

Herr Kleinfeld replaced the more sedate Heinrich von Pierer after impressing company executives by improving results — and sacking staff — in America. His task in Germany will be to merge mobile and fixed-line phone businesses, entailing a radical restructuring that requires the co-operation of the already surly trade unions. Hence, the disappearing Rolex: the unions react sensitively to any example of ostentatious privilege.

Ulf Poschardt, one of Germany’s leading style gurus, said yesterday that he deeply regretted Herr Kleinfeld’s concession to the egalitarian mood. “He bowed to a climate which says you can only consume that which is allowed by the social consensus,” he said.

Giving-in merely reinforced a general German resistance to spending money: retail sales have been dropping for three years. There was no point, he said, in being churlish about a man who earned €3.3 million (£2.8 million) a year and wore a watch that cost €3,700.

“On the contrary, he could encourage a bit of spending by having the watch coloured gold in the new set of retouched pictures,” he said.

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