Beginnings
Hayek was born in Beirut in 1928, studied in Lyon and became a management consultant in Zurich, founding Hayek Engineering in 1963. By 1982 the two groups that owned most of Swiss watchmaking, ASUAG and SSIH, were close to collapse under the weight of cheap quartz from Japan, and their banks asked Hayek to report on what to do with them. The expectation was a sale. He recommended a merger, cheap watches made in Switzerland, and keeping the brands.
What he changed
The two groups were merged in 1983 into SMH, which Hayek and a group of investors bought control of in 1985 and which took the name Swatch Group in 1998. On 1 March 1983 the Swatch went on sale: a plastic watch of 51 parts, designed by ETA’s engineers, that gave the group the volume to carry Omega, Longines and Tissot through the crisis. He bought Breguet in 1999 and rebuilt it as the group’s summit, and his city car, drawn with Mercedes, became the Smart. He ran the group until his death at his desk in Biel in 2010, at eighty-two.
Why it matters now
Swiss watch employment fell from 90,000 to 28,000 between 1970 and 1988; that it recovered at all, and that the Swiss mechanical watch became a luxury rather than a relic, is largely the strategy in his report of 1982.
Worth knowingHe said the Smart had to have room for “two big adults and a crate of beer”, and that he had never worked a day in his life, only enjoyed it. He was photographed wearing several watches at once on each wrist.
Historian’s noteHayek is often called the inventor of the Swatch. The watch was conceived at ETA by Ernst Thomke, Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller before he arrived; what he did was finance it, market it and build the group around it.
SourcesWIPO Magazine · WatchTime · Forbes