The Hindu Business Line : What’s on Hayek’s wrists?

The reasons Hayek does not wear a pair of cuff-links is because he has to constantly pull up his shirt sleeves. That is to display some half-a-dozen watches he constantly wears on both hands. In some ways the watches on his wrist tell a story – ; the story of what Hayek’s current preoccupation is. Here are some of the observations over the years:

Swatch celebrated production of its 100th million Swatch in 1992 at Zermatt. It took eight years to achieve this magical number. The first notable watch on Hayek’s wrist in 1992 was an Omega quartz model with an inlay of gold. This was also Omega’s first quartz watch that displayed time in both the analogue and digital formats. Hayek clearly loves this Omega. Probably he is very proud of the technology used in this Omega model.

In 1993, when Hayek came to Boston to launch his limited edition Platinum Swatch in then the world’s largest Swatch Gallery (owned by an Indian, Raman Handa), he wore the same Omega model alongside the Swatch Platinum.

When Hayek arrived in New York at the United Nations to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations, a photo of his hands showed that he continued to wear the Omega model.

Hayek carried the Olympic torch for the Atlanta Games in 1996 and spoke of the 200 million Swatches having been produced. It therefore took him four years (1992-96) to produce the second 100 million Swatches. Swatch was the time-keeper at the Atlanta Olympics and therefore it is not surprising that both hands of Hayek carried lots of Swatches.

It took the next ten years for Swatch to produce next 133 million Swatches. The ‘Swatch 333 million’ celebration was done in 2006 at Lugano in Switzerland. Clearly the previous decade witnessed a slowdown in Swatch production. It is at Lugano that Hayek accepted the challenge given to him by the President of Switzerland that Swatch will be soon worn by every tenth Chinese.

This writer had the opportunity to examine Hayek’s wrists in an exclusive interview in 2008 at Bregenz, Austria. This time it was the 25th anniversary of Swatch and the watchmaker had reached the 350th million. The famous Omega prevailed on Hayek’s wrist. There was also the first Black Plastic Swatch ever made, called “Original”. Hayek has been wearing the Swatch for all these 25 years.

He was proud to say that a couple of years ago the Museum of Modern Art, New York offered to buy the first Swatch ever made from Hayek’s wrist for the price of a quarter-of-a-million dollars. Hayek proudly refused the offer.

There was, of course, one more Swatch that was being launched the next day. In this instance, the model was Quantum of Solace; a black-and-white Chrono Swatch, the 22nd Swatch in the James Bond Villain series. There were two more watches. Both Breguet. Extremely elegant in design – both complicated watches and large in diameter and skeletal in their construction. Hayek was proud to say that he had a two-day, offsite meeting with the entire technical team of Breguet. In two days they came out with 445 new ideas. The two Breguet models he was wearing were an outcome of these new ideas.

Hayek is clearly proud of his new acquisition, Breguet, a top-end maker of mechanical watches. It is well known that he has now asked his son, Nicholas Hayek Jr, to personally look after Breguet. Company insiders told this writer that Hayek has never taken so much of personal interest in any of the brands other than Swatch. Maybe we are about to see some serious innovations in mechanical watches from Breguet as we have seen in quartz and plastics from Swatch!

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