No Short Cuts

Swatch Group board member and boss of Breguet and Blancpain Marc Hayek tells us about the importance of realistic strategies and how to keep old watches alive

- Ashok Soman

The name Hayek is synonymous with contemporary watchmaking in Switzerland, one of the few family names that trade on strategic vision and business acumen rather than a patrimony of watchmaking skills. As the grandson of the great Nicholas G. Hayek, Marc Alexander Hayek is, by all accounts, a human dynamo of business ideas. Having said that, he was also once described by the Financial Times in 2009 as a bit of an enigma. This was a mere four years after he joined the Swatch Group board, at the relatively untested age of 34, and assumed the leadership role at Blancpain. of course, he had been in charge of marketing at Blancpain since 2001, so he was not a complete unknown.

Perhaps more importantly, from the standpoint of Hayek’s ties to watchmaking and the Swatch Group, he had joined the company way back in 1992, where he honed his professional skills in public relations and marketing. In conversation, he maintains today the earnest zeal of a public relations man, having the effect of putting people at ease. In this way, he reminds one of another business legend in watchmaking, Jean Claude Biver. In fact, he succeeded Biver at Blancpain and even managed to exceed him on most scales,  except of course the decibel scale.

Today, Hayek is perhaps equally well known for succeeding another even more powerful figure in watchmaking, his grandfather Nicholas G. Hayek at Breguet. The late Hayek senior boomed just as loudly as Biver and was even more commanding. since he took over here – and also at Jaquet Droz – he has given what seems like a veritable barrage of media interviews, arguably making him a much more familiar presence today. It also allows him to address the positioning of Breguet and Blancpain clearly, as he did in 2015 with the HH Journal, telling Christopher roulet that Blancpain and Breguet retain their individual identities and therefore their own technical developments.