Nicolas Hayek

Nicolas George Hayek ( born February 19, 1928 in Beirut, Lebanon, † 28 June, 2010 Biel / Bienne ), was a Swiss businessman. He was the founder and President and CEO of the Swatch Group.

• 4.1 Leopard tank
• 4.2 ETH Zurich
• 4.3 Riitli celebration

Family

Hayek grew up in Beirut largely in the care of his Lebanese mother Linda Hayek, born Tamer on. His father George Nicolas Hayek worked as a dental surgeon and was Lebanese- American dual citizen. His family belonged to the Greek Orthodox elite in Lebanon. The family moved in 1949 in Switzerland.

In Switzerland in 1951, he married Marianne Mezger, who comes from a family of industrialists and had worked as an au pair girl in his Lebanese family. Their son, Nick Hayek is Chief Executive Officer and their daughter Nayla Hayek has been elected after the death of her father as President of the Board of Directors of the Swatch Group. Since 1964, Hayek was Swiss citizen and was entitled home in Meisterschwanden, where he also lived.

Hayek died on 28 June 2010 at the age of 82 of heart failure at his company in Biel. The funeral took place in the immediate family. At the public memorial service Kursaal in Bern more than a thousand people have taken leave.

Training

Hayek first visited the French Jesuit school and then high school. He studied mathematics, physics and chemistry.

Work and self-employment

From 1950 began Hayek's actual career: He worked in the mathematics department of a Swiss reinsurance, took over from 1951 different items in the industry, where he gained management experience, most notably in the engineering firm of his father Eduard Mezger. This company he led for some time because his father had been canceled due to illness. The unconventional occurring Hayek conceded soon this post and was looking for a job that offered him the opportunity to " learn something new every day something" and make better use of its experience and network of contacts built up.

Hayek Engineering

In 1957 he founded with a loan of CHF 4'000 a management consulting firm in Zurich. Industry business from large German companies followed. In 1963 he left his company " Hayek Engineering " entered in the Swiss Commercial Register. By 1979, Hayek was able to win more than 300 large customers in more than 30 countries, where he was especially with his management credo very successful: "The rarest resource that we have, are types of entrepreneurs in top management. "

Hayek Engineering has about 150 employees (as of 2009). Addition to its headquarters Hayek Engineering AG in Zurich offices in Germany and France: Hayek Engineering ( Germany ) GmbH in Eschborn and Hayek France SA in Paris.

Swatch Group

Nicolas G. Hayek was co-founder and from 1986 Chairman and Delegate of the Board of Directors of the Swatch Group, headquartered in Biel.

From 1980 Hayek worked as a strategic advisor to the watch companies ASUAG and SSIH. He recommended their merger, put it down the guidelines and developed the company's future strategy .. In the merger in 1983, he participated in and financially. So the new company SMH ( Société de Microélectronique et d' Horlogerie / Swiss Society for Microelectronics and Watchmaking Industries ) which was renamed The Swatch Group AG in 1998 was born.

With great self-confidence Hayek began the revolutionary concept for Switzerland the electronic quality watch and in 1983 launched the Swatch brand to enforce. The secret of success of Swatch watches was that their components is reduced from the previous 151 items for conventional quartz watches on 51 standardized parts, welded the mechanism in an injection-molded plastic body and a sale price of 80 to 100 Swiss francs were targeted. 1981 saw the introduction of the first watch whose brand name of Second Watch, Swiss Watch, S -Watch was final mutated to Swatch. These were first marketed in the United States. Always new, created by artists collections were launched. 1984, sold 800,000 copies.

Hayek went his entrepreneurial path consistently. He placed watches luxury brands such as Tissot, Blancpain, Omega, Longines, Rado, Certina, Hamilton, but also cheap products like the kids watch Flik Flak precise on the market. In 1994 the share of Swiss watches in the world market 53 percent.

Smart

One of the favorite projects Hayek was the concept of Smart cars (Swatch - Mobil), a micro compact car with environmentally friendly electric drive or hybrid drive. The concept was initially developed with VW and from 1994 in collaboration with Daimler -Benz. Until the beginning of 1994 only produced two design studies. In 1997 the vehicle was unveiled to the public - but without electric or hybrid drive. As a result, Hayek got out of the project because it did not meet its original expectations. On November 1, 1998, he sold his shares in Mercedes, which produce the vehicle as a Smart Fortwo for sale.

Benelos Clean Power

Hayek was involved in the development of sustainable energy generation and use of energy technologies. To this end he founded in 2007 the Benelos Clean Power, which drives along with the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) research on cars with alternative drives.

Society and politics

Leopard tank

1984 considered the Military Commission of the Swiss National buying German Leopard tank. The Swiss defense industry and their representatives in the policy propagated the previous owner. As an added solid expert introduced Hayek noted that the licensed production in Switzerland would have been 300-400 percent more expensive than buying the German manufacturer. First slandered as " traitors ", Hayek finally got right, and was told by the press Entrepreneur of the Year.

ETH Zurich

1985 Hayek had helped to align the new ETH Zurich and to end the hiring freeze, the covenant of the mid-1970s over the two government-owned Swiss university ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne (EPFL ) had imposed. He had " broken a taboo " - " The ETH must be totally free from any influence develop " he said.

Riitli celebration

In 2007, Hayek together with Johann Schneider -Ammann and other security costs of Riitli celebration ( the order of CHF 100'000 - 200'000 ), " out of concern for the reputation of Switzerland abroad ." Thus, the donors had overcome the concerns of the public administration and " saved the Riitli celebration ."

In September 2009, Hayek asked at a press conference in Bern together with the politicians Christoph Blocher and Christian Levrat, who had followed his invitation that Swiss banks such as UBS and Credit Suisse will no longer be allowed to be so large that the state can not let them fail ( "Too Big to Fail" ). State rules must therefore banks " clip the wings ". Together, they braced themselves against the fact that it. Following the crisis so on go as by then

Awards

Writings

• Nicolas G. Hayek, Joseph F. Kümin ( Editor); Foundation Freedom & Responsibility (ed.): Freedom, Responsibility and the EU accession of Switzerland. Speaking at the " Head of Missions Lunch Meetings» by Boris Lazar, Ambassador of the Czech Republic, on March 16, 2009 at the Kursaal Bern. In: Series Freedom & Responsibility. Volume 4, Society and Church Where? Members Letter No. 233, Lachen SZ / Foundation Freedom & Responsibility, Kriens LU 2009 (excluding ISBN ).