Swatch Denies Hayek Jr. to Succeed Late Father as Chairman of Watchmaker
Swatch Group AG, the Swiss-based watchmaker, denied a report in the magazine Bilanz that Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek Jr. will succeed his late father Nicolas as chairman of the company.
“The meeting of the board will take place only tomorrow” and no decision had been made on a successor, Swatch spokeswoman Beatrice Howald said today, commenting on the Bilanz report in a telephone interview from Biel, Switzerland.
The elder Hayek, a businessman of Lebanese origin credited with reviving the Swiss watch industry from Japanese competition, died yesterday of heart failure at age 82 while at work, the maker of Omega timepieces said in a statement.
Swatch dropped 5.6 percent to 307.20 francs ($283.81) today in Zurich trading, the stock’s largest drop in eight months.
Hayek gained fame in Switzerland when he was hired to advise two Swiss watchmakers on the verge of bankruptcy amid competition from cheaper, Japanese-made watches. He recommended that the companies, which owned Omega, Longines and Tissot, merge and develop a low-cost watch called Swatch that consumers might buy in addition to their more expensive ones. By 1992, 100 million Swatches had been produced.
Hayek received France’s Legion d’Honneur in 2003 for his services to watchmaking.
To contact the reporter on this story: Carolyn Bandel in Zurich at cbandel@bloomberg.net
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