Henri-Ferdinand Lavanchy

Henri-Ferdinand Lavanchy (born July 9, 1926 in Reverolle ; † January 4, 2012 in Cannes ) was a Swiss entrepreneur from Vaud and founder of the Adia recruitment agency (now Adecco ).

Live and act

Lavanchy, born in Reverolle in 1926, the son of the "village king" of Chéserex , first worked in the banking business and as a seller of typewriter ribbons after completing a bank apprenticeship. A flu epidemic that broke out in 1957 and led to staff shortages in many companies gave him the idea of ​​offering replacement staff as a service. His Bureau d'occupation provisoire temporaire , which became Adia Interim in 1959 , was the first recruitment agency in Europe.

In 1986, at the age of 60, Lavanchy sold the majority of shares in Adia to a group of his management employees and became involved in extensive real estate businesses around the world. Among other things, he had a golf course built in Nyon , near Bonmont , which became a meeting point for the top of western Switzerland's economy and politics. In 2011 the magazine Bilanz estimated his fortune at between 200 and 300 million francs. His home and residential community Chéserex was regularly classified as the seat of Adia and later Adecco as the richest community in Switzerland.

Lavanchy died in Cannes in January 2012 of a lung disease. He left behind his wife Renée Lavanchy-Desamory, with whom he had three daughters, his partner Erika Rilke, and a son.

literature

• Laurent Tissot: Lavanchy, Henri-Ferdinand. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Madeleine Schürch, Jean-Marc Corset, Joelle Fabre: Décès d'Henri-Ferdinand Lavanchy: "Il aimait profondément son coin de terre" 24 hours of January 4, 2011
2. ↑ Obituary in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 7, 2011, p. 16.
3. ↑ Madeleine Schürch: Obsèques d'Henri-Ferdinand Lavanchy: Le seigneur de Bonmont sera inhumé à Reverolle , 24 heures of January 5, 2011