The story about the Rolex Charity

A lot of people are familiar with the Swiss manufacturer Rolex and their models like the Submariner and Datejust. What’s new to some people is that Rolex is a charity and is owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, ever since 1960. That means Rolex is owned by a private family trust for over 60 years now.

Timo Klinge

Chief Entertainment Officer

Updated at: 14/12/2023

The history of the founders

To get things started, Rolex was founded by Alfred Davis and his brother-in-law Hans Wilsdorf, when they created the company Wilsdorf and Davis in London. In 1905, they started out with distributing movements and placing them in watch cases. These early wristwatches were sold to a lot of jewellers, who put their own names on the dials. A couple of years later, in 1919, Wilsdorf and Davis changed the company name to Rolex and moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland.

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When Wildorf’s wife died in 1944, Wilsdorf established the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, a private trust which he left all of his Rolex shares, making sure that some of the company’s income would go to charity instead of being used for different activities. Wilsdorf died in 1960, so that was the moment that the trust has owned Rolex SA in Switzerland. Since the taxes are lower for a foundation, there was a bit of a buzz back in 2011: with the lack of transparency people claimed that the foundation wasn’t that giving for others, while the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation claimed that they have gifted two housing buildings to social institutions in Geneva.

Non-profit profitable company

To make things a bit harder, we have to dive into the structure within the Rolex SA company. The company itself is a for-profit organization, but is owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, which is a non-profit organization. Since there are multiple companies that each own a share in all of the other companies, it’s a bit hard to say which company owns which piece. Do you still get it? Well, we don’t. The only thing we get is that the Rolex foundation, the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, focuses on the environment, science and art and is training people to become a certified watchmaker (to see the beauty of the work but also to make sure they will get the best watchmakers in the world). So, to make sure it’s not just a vague story: Rolex is owned by the foundation, which is a non-profit organization and gives away money to several institutions, but also sponsors a lot of sports like tennis, F1, golf, yachting and equestrianism.