The Hans Wilsdorf Foundation

By the foundation’s own account, Hans Wilsdorf, after the sudden death of his wife and with no immediate heirs, left all his shares to a foundation set up for the purpose in 1945, to ensure the continuity and independence of the Rolex group; its statutes, it adds, place strong emphasis on philanthropy.¹

The foundation stands in the Geneva commercial register under the number 1675 of 1945. Its earlier registered names, Fondation Hans Wilsdorf (Montres Rolex) Genève and then (Rolex SA) Genève, carried the company in its own name; its seat is now in Carouge.²

Wilsdorf died in Geneva in 1960, and since then the foundation has owned the Rolex group, which also makes Tudor watches: Montres Tudor SA, formed in 1946, with Rolex guaranteeing its technical standards and handling its distribution and after-sales service.^1, 3, 6

The form is set by the Swiss Civil Code. A foundation is established by endowing assets for a particular purpose; it is assigned to a state authority, which must ensure that the assets are used for that purpose. This one answers to the canton of Geneva’s supervisory authority for foundations and pension institutions.^2, 7

Its statutes, last amended in May 2023, put the company before the charity. Their opening purpose is to safeguard, maintain and keep profitable the assets entrusted to it, as the founder instructed and wished; it gives “when funds are available”, and it applies the income needed to keep and develop those assets, watching in particular over “the control, homogeneity and development of the Rolex group, in the spirit and traditions of the founder”.²

The foundation describes itself as a private shareholder foundation and the owner of the Rolex group. It says it has no capital of its own: its income is the dividends the group pays it, spent on its public-interest purposes.¹

The register records a foundation council of seven members, who sign three together, and an outside auditor.²

The group it owns is laid out by Rolex as four production sites, all in Switzerland, with more than 9,000 employees: Acacias in Geneva, its headquarters, where the watches are developed and assembled; Biel, where the movements are made; Plan-les-Ouates, for cases and bracelets; and Chêne-Bourg, for dials, ceramic bezels and gem-setting. A fifth site is being built in Bulle, Rolex says.⁸

The foundation brought no companies together, as consolidating groups such as the Swatch Group and Richemont did. What it changed was who could own Rolex: since 1960 the shares have been held by a body made of assets bound to a purpose, not of members or shareholders, whose purpose the authorities may amend when, and not before, the foundation has plainly become estranged from the founder’s intentions.^1, 2, 7

So Rolex has stayed out of the markets. SWI swissinfo.ch, reporting on the historian Pierre-Yves Donzé’s book of 2024, notes that Rolex is not listed on a stock exchange and does not open its archives to researchers; Wikipedia adds that it discloses no financial figures.^3, 4

For most of the century Rolex was not one company. Its movements came from the Aegler works in Biel, known as the Manufacture des Montres Rolex, which SJX reports was wholly owned by the Borer family, was for decades Rolex Geneva’s exclusive movement supplier, and owned the Rolex trademark.⁹

The division of work was written into the register. The entry of Rolex Le Locle SA, a finishing works merged into the Biel manufacture in 2007, reserved the selling of watches to Montres Rolex SA in Geneva and the making of ébauches and watch parts to the Manufacture des Montres Rolex in Biel.¹⁰

From the late 1990s the Geneva company drew its makers in. Genex SA, a case maker at Chêne-Bourg, was renamed Rolex Industrie SA in December 1998; Rolex SA, which held all its shares, absorbed it in 2025. The Geneva dial maker Beyeler & Cie was merged into Rolex SA in 2010.^{11, 12, 13}

In 2004 Rolex Geneva took over its movement maker in Biel, as SJX and Wikipedia both date it. A holding company, Manufacture des Montres Rolex Holding AG, was registered in Biel in June 2004 to hold the manufacture’s management company, and was merged into Rolex SA in 2011.^3, 9, 14

Rolex now calls itself an integrated and independent manufacture that makes most of its components in house, and calls control of every stage of production a strategic choice. In 2023 it agreed to buy Bucherer, the retailer that had sold its watches for nearly a century; SWI swissinfo.ch notes that this gave Rolex a distribution network of its own.^{8, 15, 16, 17}

Tax law gave the form a choice. Geneva may exempt a private institution that pursues a public-utility purpose exclusively and irrevocably from cantonal and communal tax on profit and capital and from the federal direct tax on profit; the cantonal tax administration decides, in principle for an indefinite period.¹⁸

The foundation has not used that exemption since 2020, says Entreprise Romande, the weekly of Geneva’s employers’ federation, in a report of November 2025: it gave it up of its own accord and now pays several million francs in taxes.¹⁹

Its charter, adopted on June 8, 2023, names five fields: social welfare and health, training and finding work, culture, humanitarian aid, and animals and ecosystems. Most of the money stays in the canton of Geneva; humanitarian work is run from Geneva, while the work for animals and ecosystems reaches across Switzerland and abroad.¹

Watchmaking keeps a place in its statutes, which name among those it supports the Geneva watchmaking school, prizes in watchmaking at the HEAD art and design school, and the CSEM research centre in Neuchâtel, for work in watchmaking.²

In 2019 the canton signed an agreement with an association endowed by the foundation to put 25 million francs towards a new building for the State Archives of Geneva.^20, 21

How much it gives in all is not published. The sums it has spent in Geneva are unknown, though said to be very large.^21, 22