Luxury retailers lost their traditional resilience during a financial crisis that hit the rich hard but offered attractive leverage to Wall Street’s resurgence, the global recovery and increasingly wealthy emerging market consumers. The market meltdown not only produced higher saving rates in many parts of the world, but it also took its toll on the world’s wealthiest. The pain was felt worst in the United States, where the number of high net worth individuals (with $1-million or more in investable assets) declined 19% last year, according to Merrill Lynch and Capgemini’s World Wealth Report. This so-called “Madoff effect” caused plenty of pain for the luxury goods segment, which is typically very defensive. “What’s been interesting about this cycle is, it’s the first time that we’ve seen luxury lose its resilience in the face of a downturn,” said Peter O’Reilly, head of global equities at Investors Group in Dublin, owner of names like Christian Dior SA, Pernod Ricard SA and Coach Inc. – from CBC