Lebanese-born business consultant Nicolas Hayek, who created the inexpensive, plastic Swatch wristwatch, died Monday in Biel, Switzerland.
The founder and the chairman of the Swatch Group died of heart failure while working at the company’s headquarters, according to The New York Times.
Hayek was born in Beirut in 1928 and moved to Switzerland as a young man. He studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Lyon in France, and in the 1960s, started consulting firm Hayek Engineering, in Zurich. Two decades later, a group of Swiss banks asked Hayek to compile a report on how the Swiss watchmaking industry might best be liquidated based on suffering sales. Instead, Hayek merged two of its former leading companies, Asuag and SSIH, bought a majority stake in the reorganized group, known as SMH (Société Suisse de Microélectronique et d’Horlogerie), and in 1983 introduced the Swatch. The watch quickly became a novelty and collectors item, thus eventually leading to the revival of the Swiss market.
Today, the Swatch Group includes its namesake brand as well as Breguet, Omega, Longines, Tissot, Calvin Klein and Mido. Hayek stepped down as the Swatch Group’s chief executive in 2002 and was succeeded by his son, Nicolas Jr. His daughter Nayla sits on the company’s board.