IMD is saddened to announce the death of Professor Max Daetwyler in his mid-90s.
Born in 1928, Max was an expert in strategy. Among many roles, he sat on the Board of the International Red Cross, in Geneva. In the 1970s, he initiated an early study on multinational firms.
Max served as an administrative director and member of the faculty at IMD’s predecessor, the Centre d’Études Industrielles (CEI) in Geneva, which was set up by Canadian aluminium producer Alcan in 1946 as a training centre for its managers.
“At the beginning, it was just for Alcan managers; 80% of the income was Alcan,” Daetwyler recalled in a video celebrating IMD’s 75th anniversary.
CEI was renamed the International Management Institute (IMI) in 1982. In 1990, IMI merged with the Institut pour l’Etude des Méthodes de Direction de l’Entreprise (IMEDE) in Lausanne to create IMD in its current form.
“Max Daetwyler was an amazingly honest, modest, and humourful colleague: discreet, but efficient and dedicated, very much liked by all,” said his former colleague Georges Haour, Professor Emeritus at IMD.
Max is survived by his partner Mireille.
