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Address of Nayla Hayek, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Swatch Group, to the 2011 General Assembly of the Swatch Group Shareholders on May 31, 2011, at the Congress Center Basel (Switzerland).

The spoken German word is valid.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow shareholders,

As you certainly noticed when you entered the exhibition hall, the symbol of this year’s General Assembly is a rainbow. Why a rainbow? Because the rainbow unites both the rain and the sun. Last year, the rain was our sadness and the tears we shed at the loss of our father – I am referring to the father of our family and the father of the Swatch Group; the sun is our enormous commercial success. The watches which have been presented to you this year are therefore in rainbow colours.

Even though the year was not easy and the beginning of the summer was overshadowed by the death of our Chairman and the founder of the Swatch Group, our father Nicolas Hayek, we can report extremely positive business results. The results confirm the strategic soundness of the choices made and carried out in recent years by the Board and its Chairman, my father. These choices, which our company’s Executive Management Board and Extended Group Management Board have tirelessly implemented – enthusiastically, forcefully and scrupulously – and which the entire staff and all our partners have supported, have now translated into a record net operating income that surpasses the historic results of 2007.

Let’s again review some of the key figures of 2010:

• Record gross sales of 6.4 billion Swiss francs, almost 19% higher than the previous year despite a negative currency effect of 164 million Swiss francs due mainly to the weakness of the euro and currencies tied to the dollar in the second half of 2010. This negative impact has been taken into account in these figures.
• A record operating profit of 1.4 billion Swiss francs, with an operating margin of 23.5%. Net income of over a billion Swiss francs, representing an increase of 41.5% over the previous year, in spite of losses resulting from very unfavourable exchange rates. This improved performance was generated mainly by increased capacity utilization and the usual stringent cost containment.
• Substantial equity of 7.1 billion Swiss francs, or 82.4% of the total equity and liabilities. The conversion of the convertible bond amounting to 385 million Swiss francs in October 2010 also contributed to this strong equity. The average return on equity was a remarkable 16.5% (versus 13.3% in the previous year). Operating cash flow also increased significantly. Thanks to the strong equity and high level of liquidity, the Group is in a position to take advantage of any interesting opportunities to increase its market share and presence.

The exceptional results show that Swatch Group’s Board of Directors and Management Board were right in their decision during the crisis in late 2008 and early 2009 to safeguard every workplace for which they hold the responsibility. The support and the trust which was given to us by our shareholders also contributed to these outstanding results; therefore the Board of Directors are proposing to this General Assembly, a dividend increased by 25% to 5.00 Swiss francs per bearer share (4.00 Swiss francs in the previous year) and 1.00 Swiss franc per registered share (0.80 Swiss francs in the previous year). This increase is fully justified by 2011’s promising start and by the positive outlook for the entire year despite the current strength of the Swiss franc which disadvantages our products on the world markets.

There have been some significant adjustments to our Board of Directors. In March 2010, the Board announced that it would propose that the General Assembly bring Mr. Jean-Pierre Roth, the former Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, and my brother Mr. Nick Hayek, the President of our company’s Executive Management Board, into our company’s highest authority. These decisions, which had already been made long before by the Board, have bolstered our expertise in both the financial domain, in which Mr. Roth is a noted authority, and the industrial realm, in which Nick Hayek has shown extraordinary abilities ever since his appointment as the Swatch Group’s CEO . These adjustments, including my own appointment in March as the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors alongside Mr. Peter Gross, together with support from Ms. Esther Grether, Mr. Claude Nicollier and Mr. Ernst Tanner, have enabled us to weather two significant events experienced by the Board this year: first, a dramatic one, the passing of my father, Nicolas G. Hayek, on June 28, 2010; the other, a thrilling one, even though it took a comrade from us: the resignation of Johann Niklaus Schneider-Ammann following his election to the Swiss Federal Council on September 22, 2010.

I was unanimously elected Chair of Swatch Group’s Board of Directors on June 30, which enabled us to work with perfect continuity despite our personal grief. Our Board, which consists exclusively of Swiss citizens residing in our country and which for a long time has included women, remains one of the best among large Swiss companies.

Its members are notable individuals whose expertise qualifies them to define together, over the coming years, the strategy for our future. This composition will continue to guarantee our company’s long-term development for our shareholders, our employees, our clients, and our friends – all those who admire Swatch Group for its refusal to yield to hazardous short-term speculations, a practice which my father so strongly criticized in this same report in 2008.

I would like to take a moment to thank Federal Councillor Johann Niklaus Schneider-Ammann for the decade he spent on our Board of Directors: for his faithfulness and loyalty, his perceptiveness, his strong commitment to the notion of «entrepreneur», his humour and sense of fair play.  He will certainly be – in fact already is – a highly competent public servant for our country.

Dr. Peter Gross has also expressed his desire, for reasons of age, to leave the board effective on the date of this General Assembly. Dr. Gross was elected in late 1977 to what was then Board of ASUAG and in early 1978 to the Board of SSIH. He was involved in the 1983 reorganization and merger of the two companies. The Board has valued his legal and financial input and the Swatch Group is extremely grateful for the outstanding contributions he has made throughout his 35 years on the Board.

As you know, my father left us on June 28, 2010. His heart failed while he was doing what he loved: working. It is not possible to elaborate here on our family’s sadness at this loss, or more specifically on my own grief. There are many so things I would like people to remember when they think of him, things that especially characterized my father in his public and professional life. You will understand if we keep our most personal memories to ourselves: the memories of who he was to his wife, my mother Marianne; to his son Nick; his grandson Marc; and to me, which only we can measure and which is not an easy thing to share in the context of this meeting. I hope he will be remembered for his enthusiasm, his imagination, his refusal to accept established conventions without first challenging them and, so often, showing their irrationality. My father was someone who went against the tide and loved freedom; a man of very strong character who liked to assert himself, sometimes very bluntly; a person with inexhaustible curiosity and energy. Perhaps it was more difficult to recognize some of the rather discreet aspects of his personality, such as his business acumen and his great ability to motivate those who worked with him to help them express their gifts, or his admiration for science and his love of creation. His incredible capacity for work was unforgettable, and is recognizable by the results he achieved during his professional life. Each of you can create your own image of this exceptional man – but I hope you will remember him for many years to come. This year’s Annual Report neither tells his story nor serves as a monument to him. It shares with you a few «moments» that are not part of any logical scheme and they don’t claim to be exhaustive – they are just a few emotional «moments»  in his life during the time he supported Swatch Group as the Chairman of its Board of Directors since 1986. The reason I have assumed this position is to keep his spirit and his work alive, and I shall do so.

There has been a slight decline in the number of members of the Swatch Group’s Executive Management Board and Extended Group Management Board since last year.  Mr. Rudolf Semrad, has resigned and will be focusing exclusively on managing our Austrian subsidiary, which is an important market for our company. Marc A. Hayek, my son, is taking on the Breguet and Jaquet Droz brands that had been managed by my father. With his extensive experience in high luxury brands and his thorough knowledge of the most sophisticated mechanical watchmaking, from which Blancpain has very successfully benefited, he has been predestined for this task.

To simplify our production structures, Valdar was integrated into François Golay. Frédéric Piguet has been incorporated into its main partner, Blancpain, making it the Swatch Group’s third very-high-level manufacture. Breguet, Blancpain and Jaquet Droz now all have their own manufacture. The acquisitions of Tanzarella and Novi as well as the final consolidation of Indexor into Universo have allowed us to increase our strike force on the high-end and mid-range mechanical watch markets.

Turning to product creation, we recall launches of the Type XXII 10 Hz by Breguet, the new Fifty Fathoms by Blancpain, the Ladymatic by Omega, new variations on the DolceVita by Longines, the Sea Touch from Tissot and the Colour Codes and New Gent collections by Swatch, to list only the most spectacular.

Other notable events included: the opening of four boutiques – Breguet, Blancpain, Omega and Swatch – in May at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai; the opening of a magnificent Breguet boutique on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich with a museum that will exhibit important documents written by A. L. Breguet; the inauguration of nine Omega boutiques in the United States alone; the opening of Blancpain, Jaquet Droz, Glashütte Original and Tissot boutiques in highly select locations in Paris; the expansion of the Tech-Airport network in world-class airports; and an increase in the number of Tourbillon boutiques, to name just a few. This move to rapidly develop our own mono- and multi-brand boutiques will continue in the coming years.

On a more glamorous note, we welcome partnerships with Kate Winslet at Longines and Tony Parker at Tissot, and the continuation of our relationships with Nicole Kidman, George Clooney, Daniel Craig and many others.

This year, Swatch Group also reaffirmed its clear position on its environmental and social responsibility making a commitment not to use leathers, metals, or any other necessary raw materials in our products or our business dealings that are not obtained in an ethically irreproachable way.

We are well on our way toward another record year in 2011 and will do everything in our power to make it happen in spite of two aggravating elements – negative currency effects and capacity constraints.

I offer all of you, dear employees in Switzerland and abroad, shareholders, members of the executive staff and the Board of Directors my warmest thanks for your work, your unassuming but very noticeable support, and your friendship during 2010, a year which was so sad, and yet so brilliant.