Yann Bouillonnec - Perfect Timing

Yann Bouillonnec readily admits he wasn’t sure what to expect when the offer came for him to move to Hong Kong.
The year was 1996 and the then 23-year-old had up until that point in time pretty much spent the majority of his life studying or playing golf.Asia was, literally, half a world away but the thought of the adventure it might hold meant that the young masters degree graduate from Toulouse needed – in his words – less than a second to make the decision.
“My career actually came about because of golf,’’ Bouillonnec explains. “One day I was having lunch with a friend of my father’s after playing golf and he was in the watch industry. He spoke different languages, he had travelled a lot – I was pretty impressed – and he said that if the industry interested me I should give him a call.
“It ended up there were two jobs – one in Switzerland and one in Hong Kong. And I didn’t even need a second to think about where I wanted to go. I was 23 and it was very exciting.’’
The timing, too, could not have been more perfect.