SWEET VALLEY HIGHS

In recent times, watchmaking bosses have become like rock stars, their auras and magnetism burning as brightly as their brands. Cue hotshots such as Richard Mille or MB&F’s Maximilian Büsser, or the maverick Chief Executive François-Henry Bennahmias, who in 10 years has helped turn Audemars Piguet (AP) into a business worth more than one and a half billion Swiss francs.

Indeed, the family-owned watchmakers have a reputation, like their designs, for rakish leaders. Among the most notable is the late Georges Golay, AP’s charismatic Managing Director who helped mastermind the 1972 Royal Oak, the groundbreaking, octagonal-bezelled, hand-finished steel watch that spawned the luxury sports watch genre as we know it today. Golay’s visionary entrepreneurialism, entwined with his passion for Switzerland’s Vallée de Joux, watchmaking, and all who worked in it, made him an industry star. Another watchboss luminary, Jean-Claude Biver, was hired by Golay in 1976 as a sales associate, and said of his former boss: “He has been the first disrupter of modern watchmaking and contributed to the fundamental change of today’s perception of a luxury watch… His influence has been even bigger and