De Bethune at the crossroads

[SINGAPORE] After a decade and a half at the helm of De Bethune, Pierre Jacques is stepping into a quieter, but no less influential role.

The man who helped steer one of the most uncompromising independent watchmakers into the top tier of contemporary horology is now honorary president – still close to the brand, still guiding its philosophy, but consciously making space for the future.

“De Bethune will remain exactly the same,” says Jacques, during a visit to Singapore in late 2025. Its identity, he insists, is immovable – anchored in the vision set out by its founders, master watchmaker Denis Flageollet and entrepreneur David Zanetta, when they established it in 2002. From the outset, their ambition was not to revive the past, but to reinvent it: to practise watchmaking as an art form, rooted in tradition yet resolutely of its time.

That ethos continues to guide the manufacture in L’Auberson, in the canton of Vaud, where De Bethune operates less as a conventional factory than as a research and development atelier. It is a place where cutting-edge materials and techniques coexist with the spirit of the great 18th-century master watchmakers.

Every component is conceived, developed and crafted in-house, with obsessive attention paid to the smallest detail. The guiding principle is deceptively simple: not to do more, but to do better – drawing inspiration from the past while perpetually reinventing it, and building bridges with science, astronomy, design and engineering.

Jacques’ decision to transition out of the chief executive officer role was as personal as it was strategic. He felt the timing was right – both for himself and for the brand. “I didn’t want to become an old CEO running such a fantastic company by habit,” he says. Leadership, he believes, also means knowing when to create space for renewal.

That space has inevitably fuelled speculation about what – and who – might come next. While De Bethune has not announced a successor, the industry rumour is that Francois-Henry Bennahmias, the former star CEO of Audemars Piguet, could take over Jacques, as well as acquire a stake in the brand.

Neither party has commented publicly, but the rumour has intensified discussion around De Bethune’s next chapter, given Bennahmias’ outsized role in transforming Audemars Piguet into one of the most culturally influential brands in contemporary watchmaking.

Meaning of modern watchmaking

For Jacques, however, succession is less about names than continuity. He stresses that the key people guiding the brand forward are already known to collectors and deeply embedded within the company. His own role, he says, is to ensure a smooth and thoughtful transition – one that preserves De Bethune’s DNA rather than disrupts it.

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His own journey into watchmaking was never planned. He began his career in publishing and business development, but the pivotal moment came in early 2011, when Jacques became CEO of De Bethune. “From that day, my blood turned blue,” he recalls, citing the brand’s signature colour.

Today, De Bethune stands firmly among the most revered independent watchmakers in the world. Its production remains deliberately limited, yet its reputation continues to grow. That status was underscored in November 2024, when it was honoured at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve with the award for Best Men’s Complication, recognising the DB Kind of Grande Complication.

The watch features seven complications, including a perpetual calendar, a leap year indication, a spherical moon phase, an ultra-light titanium tourbillon, jumping seconds, an end of power reserve indication and a retrograde age of the moon.

Such pieces illustrate what Jacques believes truly sets De Bethune apart: an unshakeable conviction that watchmaking is an art, not a commercial exercise. Cost, complexity and difficulty are secondary to the pursuit of perfection and beauty.

At the heart of the brand lies a deliberate duality. De Bethune is at once radically contemporary and deeply classical. “Before you can play rock and roll, you have to know how to play classical music,” Jacques muses, before paraphrasing Audemars Piguet’s famed motto: “Rules must first be mastered before they can be broken.”

As for what lies ahead, Jacques remains open-ended. He jokes about going fishing “for a while but not forever”. Curiosity, he insists, remains intact. “I’m still full of energy and curiosity; let’s see where life brings me.”