Nicolas Hayek

Switzerland, watches. Hayek, a Lebanese-born consultant, was asked by banks in the early 1980s to advise on Switzerland's collapsing watch industry, battered by cheap Japanese quartz. Instead of selling the brands, he merged two failing groups into what became Swatch Group and backed the cheap, colourful plastic Swatch, which restored Swiss volume production and protected brands such as Omega. He died in 2010.