180 YEARS OF
180 YEARS OF
180 YEARS OF
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Your father, Nicolas G. Hayek, is cited as the savior of<br />
the Swiss watch industry, as well as a great visionary.<br />
What, from your current perspective, were his most outstanding<br />
achievements?<br />
Yes, my father was truly a visionary who accomplished a<br />
great deal in the watch industry. His most outstanding<br />
achievements are well documented, and they continue to<br />
be fresh in my mind today and will remain with me my<br />
whole life.<br />
e early 1980s was an exciting time. Your father’s decision<br />
to merge the weakened watch groups SSIH and<br />
ASUAG to create SMH (now known as Swatch Group)<br />
was a revolutionary event for the watch industry as well<br />
as for your family. How did you perceive this at the time?<br />
As you say, it was a revolutionary event for us too, and it<br />
demanded a huge amount of personal involvement and<br />
emotion from my father and my mother as well.<br />
What characteristics did you inherit from your father?<br />
And what are among the most important things you<br />
learned from him?<br />
Nayla Hayek with<br />
Pius Schwizer, winner<br />
of the Longines<br />
Trophy, at the CSIO<br />
Switzerland 2011 in<br />
St. Gallen<br />
at is very dicult for me to judge. You would have to<br />
ask the people who know me best. What I did learn from<br />
him is most of all to be myself, and to believe in myself,<br />
and remain true to myself.<br />
You have been a successful horse breeder for many<br />
years. Can you tell us exactly what you do?<br />
Yes, I do breed horses. When I am with the horses I do<br />
what all horse owners do – I look aer them, feed them,<br />
I care …<br />
What is it about horses that fascinates you?<br />
Just like with people. Not every horse fascinates me to the<br />
same extent. Each breed, and each horse within that<br />
breed is so very dierent.<br />
How do you coordinate this work with your responsibilities<br />
as Chair of the Board of Directors at Swatch Group?<br />
Sometimes it is dicult to keep everything under one<br />
umbrella. But I try my best.<br />
What characteristics does a successful breeder need to<br />
bring to the table?<br />
Patience and imagination are rst and foremost, along<br />
with the courage to make decisions.<br />
Are there parallels to the watch business?<br />
Well, you can see for yourself …<br />
Longines sponsors many dierent equestrian sports.<br />
Does this give you a stronger emotional connection to<br />
Longines?<br />
I have a strong emotional connection to all the Swatch<br />
Group watch brands. Watches are fascinating objects in<br />
themselves. And naturally the equestrian world is very<br />
close to my heart and is the reason why I’m oen present<br />
at equestrian sporting events, especially when Longines<br />
is responsible for ocial timekeeping.<br />
Longines oers most of its watches in the price class that<br />
ranges between 1000 and 4000 Swiss francs. Will that<br />
remain so in the future?<br />
is market position has proven itself to be very successful<br />
for Longines and will most certainly remain so. But just like<br />
most of the Swatch Group watch brands, Longines also<br />
oers exclusive timepieces that cost a great deal more. <br />
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