2016 General Meeting of the Swatch Group

Nayla Hayek, chair of the Board of Directors, firstly expressed the group’s pride at having registered 200 new patents in 2015, the fruit of a continuous search for innovation, excellence and quality. She pointed out that Swatch holds more than 15 patents for the mechanical Sistem51 alone. Driven by a particular thirst for innovation, Omega for its part developed a new tool which earned certification by the Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS) for its Globemaster model. As well as citing these examples, Nayla Hayek indicated that the group’s production companies, subcontractors and around 500 apprentices had also played an important role in these results.

With new technologies fuelling the continuous development of innovations, questions of energy consumption and production had become paramount. Nick Hayek, CEO of the Swatch Group, noted that the group occupied a leading position in the world of micro-engineering and microelectronics: “We are capable of producing very small components. For example, a spiral seven times lighter than a grain of rice and half the width of a hair. We produce up to 15 million components a day.”

Used for the first time at a Swatch Group general meeting, the small electronic devices distributed at the entrance appeared to win less than unanimous approval among shareholders. After an initial vote using the new devices, 67% of those in attendance preferred the traditional method of raising their hand. The 2015 management report (annual report, annual accounts and consolidated accounts) was widely approved by the meeting, which also approved discharge of the Board of Directors and re-election of its members and senior management. At the same time, the election of Daniela Aeschilmann, vice-chair of the board of directors of the Avesco group, was approved by a majority vote.

May 26, 2016