On February 17, 2005, Leica Camera AG issued a Verlustanzeige, the notice German stock law requires once a company has lost half its share capital and has to say so to its shareholders. Four days later, it told the market that its banks had partially canceled its credit lines. The fiscal year closed at the end of March on group sales of €92.1 million and a consolidated loss of €18.1 million.
Twenty-one years later, Leica turns over €596 million a year, licenses its name to Xiaomi phones, and is reportedly being shopped at a valuation near €1 billion. The distance between those two paragraphs is almost entirely the work of one man who had never built a camera, never sold one, and had bought his first Leica shares six months before…