Hayek family buys additional Swatch shares for nearly CHF11 million

Swatch: Hayek family buys further shares for almost 11 million Keystone-SDA

The Hayek family continues to buy shares in the Swatch watch group. Following Nayla, Nick, and Marc Hayek’s acquisition of registered shares worth over CHF20.6 million ($22 million) on Monday, they made another purchase on Tuesday.

According to a management transaction published on Wednesday on the reporting page of the Swiss Stock Exchange, 607,879 Swatch registered shares were traded for approximately CHF10.9 million the previous day. According to the announcement, the transaction was carried out jointly by three notifiable persons.

These were the Hayek family, as a Swatch spokesperson confirmed to the news agency AWP at the beginning of the week. The family holds prominent positions on the Board of Directors, with Nayla Hayek as group chairwoman, CEO Nick Hayek, and his nephew Marc Hayek.

The three of them have thus raised more than CHF31 million in two days for almost 930,000 registered shares. The largest Swatch shareholder is “naturally fully supportive of the Group and is bolstering its commitment due to the attractive share price,” the spokesperson added on Tuesday.

Share price plummets

The registered shares were acquired on Tuesday at CHF34.00 each – a good average. At the beginning of the week, the shares had fallen by almost 10% following the publication of the half-year figures. They currently cost CHF33.90.

As at the end of 2023, the “Hayek Pool” and companies, institutions and individuals associated with it – i.e. before these new transactions – controlled a total of 43.3% of all voting rights in the watch group through 62.5 million registered shares and 738,026 bearer shares.

Although the Swatch registered shares have a nominal value five times lower than the bearer shares listed in the Swiss Leader Index (SLI)  a shareholder with these shares has the same voting rights as with a bearer share. Thanks to its registered shares, the Hayek family is able to hold more than 40% of the votes with relatively “little” capital.

Translated from German by DeepL/sp

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