F.P. Journe and Chanel Buy Ebel for $66.5 Million: A New Way to Own a Watch Brand

Ebel, the Swiss watch brand founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1911, is changing hands for the fourth time in three decades. On 8 October 2026, Movado Group agreed to sell 95 per cent of it for $66.5 million to a group led by Montres Journe, the Geneva company of the watchmaker François-Paul Journe, with Chanel taking part as an investor. Pierre Jacques, the former chief executive of De Bethune, will run the brand. Movado keeps the remaining 5 per cent, and the deal is expected to close in the coming months.

Each of the three buyers brings something different. Journe, whose watches are among the most sought-after of any living watchmaker, brings the craft, and he summed up his approach in the announcement with a nod to Michelangelo: “the product, the product, the product.” Chanel brings capital; Frédéric Grangié, president of Chanel Watches and Fine Jewellery, said the investment reflects “our confidence in the brand’s long-term potential.” Jacques brings the management and will lead Ebel day to day.

Ebel needs all three. In the 1980s it was one of the largest Swiss watch brands, with sales running to nine figures; it made watches for Cartier and was the largest buyer of Zenith’s El Primero movement. Then it passed from owner to owner: to the investment firm Investcorp in 1994, then to LVMH, and in 2004 to Movado, which paid 47.9 million Swiss francs. None of them gave the name back a clear profile.

For Movado, the sale is a narrowing. The American group says it wants to sharpen its focus on accessible luxury and fashion watches. It keeps its own brands, Movado, Concord, MVMT and Olivia Burton. For Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Lacoste and Calvin Klein, it holds only the licences to make and sell their watches; the fashion houses themselves are not Movado’s. In the quarter to 31 July 2026, Movado’s sales rose 4.9 per cent to $169.8 million.

Chanel, owned by the Wertheimer family, has never built a watch business the way Swatch Group, Richemont or LVMH have, by buying brands outright. For three decades it has taken stakes in specialists and independent makers and left their founders in charge: the case maker G&F Châtelain in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1993, Bell & Ross in 1998, Romain Gauthier in 2011, 20 per cent of F.P. Journe in 2018, 20 per cent of Kenissi, the movement maker founded by Tudor, and 25 per cent of MB&F in 2024. When that last deal was announced, MB&F’s founder Max Büsser said it allowed the company to “pursue our independent path, free of any pressure on growth.”

Ebel adds something new to that pattern. Until now, Chanel’s stakes went to suppliers and to independent watchmakers building their own names; Journe’s Souscription Résonance set a record for the maker at Phillips in New York. Ebel is a historic name that has lost its profile, and Chanel is not buying it alone but through its partner Journe, with a chief executive from the independent world. The name returns to the circle of La Chaux-de-Fonds, where Ebel was founded and where G&F Châtelain, Chanel’s oldest partner in watchmaking, still works. Whether craft, family capital and experienced management can revive what three corporate owners could not is the open question. The structure itself already points to another way of owning a luxury brand: through relationships rather than control.