19 October
The day in brief
The exhibition of the finalist watches of the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève has closed the second stop of its world tour in Bangkok. The watches now travel to Geneva, where this year's 19 prizes will be awarded on 7 November.
François-Henry Bennahmias, who led Audemars Piguet for more than a decade, is now working as a consultant to Hublot, at the invitation of the LVMH group.
Among the launches, Biver presents the AB, its first steel watch and its first with manual winding; Ressence combines an oil-filled dial with an in-house movement for the first time in the TYPE 10 DN; and Formex and DOXA showed new watches at the Windup Watch Fair in New York.
The GPHG closes the second stop of its world tour in Bangkok
The travelling exhibition of the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève was held from 15 to 18 October at The Forum, the cultural space of the Gaysorn Amarin centre in Bangkok. It was the second stop of the 2026 tour, which shows the public the watches nominated by the GPHG Academy before the winners are announced.
The opening was attended by the President of the Swiss Confederation, Guy Parmelin, and by the Swiss Ambassador to Thailand, Fabrice Filliez. The local partner was PMT The Hour Glass, one of the country's leading watch retailers. According to the foundation, the exhibition drew large numbers of collectors and enthusiasts from Southeast Asia.
"This stop illustrated the GPHG's universal mission: to bring together, beyond borders, talents and enthusiasts around creativity, craftsmanship and excellence," said Raymond Loretan, President of the GPHG Foundation.
The watches now move on to Geneva, where they will be on display at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire from 29 October to 15 November. On 7 November, at the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices, the 26th ceremony will award 19 prizes, including the "Aiguille d'Or" Grand Prix. The full list of nominated watches is available on the GPHG website, and the ceremony will be streamed live from 6.30pm Geneva time (5.30pm in Lisbon).
Find out more on the organisation's website.
François-Henry Bennahmias becomes an adviser to Hublot
The LVMH group has hired François-Henry Bennahmias as a consultant to Hublot. The news was first reported by the Paris publication Glitz, which quoted an internal memo saying Bennahmias would give the brand the benefit of his "strategic insight". WatchPro and the Swiss newspaper Bilan confirmed the information on Friday, 16 October.
Bennahmias joined Audemars Piguet in 1994, ran its North American subsidiary from 1999 and was chief executive of the Le Brassus manufacture from 2012 to 2023. During that period the brand created the AP House concept, launched the Code 11.59 collection and opened the Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet. After leaving, he founded The Honourable Merchants Group in 2025 and, in July this year, announced a watch brand of his own, N3W5.
Julien Tornare remains chief executive of Hublot. According to Bilan, decisions about the brand will now be taken jointly by Tornare, Bennahmias and Jean Arnault, who heads LVMH's watch division. Glitz writes that Jean Arnault is considering moving Hublot away from collaborations with artists such as Jeff Koons and Samuel Ross; Tornare told Bilan there are no plans to end them.
The appointment brings one of the most influential executives of the past decade in Swiss watchmaking into an LVMH house at a time when Hublot is reorganising its offer: last week, the brand reissued its first watch, from 1980, as the Classic Fusion Tributo.
Biver presents the AB, its first steel and manual-wind watch
Biver, the brand Jean-Claude Biver founded with his son Pierre, has presented the AB, its first watch with a steel case and its first with manual winding. It costs CHF 68,000 before taxes and is not a limited edition. With it, Biver lowers the entry price to its collection.
The case measures 38 mm in diameter and 9.8 mm in height, and is water-resistant to 80 metres. The black dial, with 18-carat 2N gold elements and an onyx outer ring, is built on three levels: the minute ring sits highest and the small seconds at 6 o'clock lowest. The markings are not printed: they are yellow gold applied by vapour deposition. The power reserve is shown in an arc by a short hand.
The JCB-004 calibre, developed with Le Cercle des Horlogers, beats at 3 Hz (21,600 vibrations per hour) and has two barrels, which provide 120 hours of power reserve. The mainplate and bridges are in white gold with a high palladium content, and the gear train is in yellow gold. Pulling the crown resets the seconds hand to zero, so the time can be set to the second. The click of the winding mechanism follows the design used in grande sonnerie watches.
The steel bracelet has more than 300 parts and a patented quick-adjust link that lengthens or shortens it by 4 mm without tools. The brand also supplies a calfskin strap.
Find out more on the brand's website.
Ressence combines oil with an in-house movement in the TYPE 10 DN
Ressence presented the TYPE 10 DN at WatchTime New York, the first of its oil-filled watches to use a movement developed by the brand itself, the RW-04. Until now, Ressence's oil-filled models were built on an ETA base. The series comprises 100 pieces and costs CHF 45,000 before taxes.
The Ressence principle is a dial without conventional hands: rotating discs, mounted on the ROCS module, turn over one another to show the hours, minutes, a second time zone and a running indicator. In the TYPE 10 DN, the ROCS 10 module, with 196 components, sits in an oil-filled chamber, while the movement runs dry in a separate chamber, divided by a titanium membrane. The two are linked by magnetic coupling, with no arbor passing through the partition.
The oil has an optical role: it removes reflections between the dial and the crystal and makes the indications appear to sit on the surface of the glass. As oil expands with heat, a bellows compensates for changes in volume, and a small coloured aperture shows whether the temperature is within the operating range.
The RW-04 calibre is self-winding, beats at 4 Hz and has two barrels, which raise the power reserve to 60 hours, compared with 36 in the previous oil-filled models. The grade 5 titanium case measures 41.5 mm and weighs 82 grams. Deliveries begin in November through the brand's retailers.
Find out more on the brand's website.
Formex and DOXA present new watches at the Windup Watch Fair
Two Swiss brands used the Windup Watch Fair, held from 16 to 18 October in New York, to present new watches. Formex showed the Essence Ceramica Dark Matter Redshift, a darker version of its ceramic watch. The 41 mm case and the bracelet are in zirconium oxide, now almost entirely sandblasted, with diamond-polished bevels. The dial is Muonionalusta meteorite with a black-gold galvanic treatment that preserves the Widmanstätten pattern, and the red details recall the brand's origins in motor racing.
The movement is the COSC-certified Sellita SW200-2 Power+, with up to 65 hours of power reserve. Formex makes 100 pieces a year, and the first series is numbered 001 to 100. It costs CHF 3,500; deliveries begin at the end of November.
DOXA has created the SUB 200T Afterglow with Exquisite Timepieces, its partner in Naples, Florida: a series of 50 pieces with a pink dial. The colour evokes the sky over the Gulf of Mexico after sunset. The 39 mm steel case, unidirectional bezel, beads-of-rice bracelet and 200-metre water resistance are unchanged, as is the Swiss automatic movement with date. The watch is sold only by Exquisite Timepieces.
What to watch
The GPHG tour shows how the Foundation uses the period between the nominations and the ceremony to take the watches to markets where demand is growing. The presence of the President of the Confederation in Bangkok gives the stop unusual political weight. The exhibition at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire and the 7 November ceremony close the cycle.
At Hublot, it remains to be seen what concrete role Bennahmias will play and how it fits with that of Julien Tornare. The experience he brings from Audemars Piguet, where he brought the brand closer to end clients through the AP Houses, may weigh on how Hublot manages its collaborations with artists.
On the technical side, the TYPE 10 DN solves a long-standing limitation at Ressence: the shorter power reserve of its oil-filled models. The AB shows Biver lowering its price without giving up the gold movement and the finishing that define the brand.
Comments