Checks And Balances

IN A FOUNDATION dedicated to promoting the watch industry, no one can tell you the time if you ask. That's because no one working there, including top management, wears a watch.

"If we do, people will ask what brand we're wearing," explains Raymond Loretan, the new president of the Geneva-based Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve (GPHG), the Swiss watch industry's equivalent of the Academy

Awards. "We wouldn't be seen as neutral if we wear one brand and not the other."

Started in 2001 and overseen by the foundation since 2011, the GPHG, with the help of an international panel of jury, shortlists by September what it describes as "the most remarkable" watches made every year - and recognizes the best in categories such as complications, chronometry, mechanical exception, sports,…