Grade One Replica Watch

The Ultimate Guide to Zenith's El Primero

14 September 2023

Most of the young watch collectors of today are looking for the names of famous watch models. This is perfectly fair, given these names were created to be remembered. But anyone who takes a closer look at superstars such as the Cosmograph Daytona by , the Nautilus by Patek Philippe, or the Royal Oak by Audemars Piguet, will quickly discover: there is more behind every great watch than good marketing and at least one equally important movement, or often even a whole series of important movements. After all, the starting point for new watch designs has historically always been technological progress, which often only needed a new face as a second step.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEIf you ask yourself which movement has influenced the entire mechanical watch world more than almost any other in the last 54 years, you will inevitably end up with the Swiss manufacture Zenith. It is certainly no coincidence that only in this case in mechanical watch history have the name of the watch and its movement become one and the same for many fans: El Primero. We tell the story of this famous watch line and its even more famous movement. Since what has become synonymous with a watch and a movement, was originally introduced as a line of watches in 1969, not a single watch or a movement.Zenith: even the company name comes from a movementBefore we discuss the famous movement, our first lines are dedicated to the Swiss manufacture that created it. My colleague, Nico Bandl, has written down the history in a nutshell for Swisswatches Magazine. It only goes into more detail in the book by Joel Duval (Zenith – The History of a Star, published on the occasion of the company’s 150th anniversary in 2015), from which many of the historical details of this story are also taken and to whom special thanks are therefore due.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEFor me, not only after reading it, the most amazing thing about Zenith – if you take a closer look at its 158-year uninterrupted history – is that this brand is very high up today, but not yet quite in the ‘Zenith’ of collector brands, next to , Patek, AP and Co., where it actually belongs. This is a double opportunity for newcomers: to make their mark as collectors of tomorrow, and at the same time to profit from the coming rise. Anyone who still doubts this should read this story (and hurry, because prices are rising rapidly).The name says it allThe company name Zenith is doubly associated with famous models and movements. The El Primero, introduced in 1969, is described here. But few know: the entire company, which Georges Favre-Jacot founded in 1865 in Le Locle in the Swiss Jura valley, was named after an earlier, equally successful line of models that were more than just a movement caliber: the celebrated Zenith' Pocket watches from 1897, which entailed different caliber variations, just like the El Primero after it. The renaming took place in the very year in which Georges Favre-Jacot left the company. Thirteen years earlier, he had introduced a pocket watch calibre that won a grand prize at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris and went on to conquer the world.Speaking of prizes and triumphs, Zenith has always stood for the accuracy of its watches and movements. To date, it can boast the incredible number of 2333 chronometer awards, 1565 of which were first prizes. This is still an absolute record among Swiss watch manufacturers and simply impressive. At least as impressive as the equally unimaginable number of more than 300 patents and 600 watch movements developed by Zenith to date, which is probably only surpassed by Jaeger-LeCoultre, a brand that, however, in the early years was primarily known for equipping many third-party brands with its movements as a supplier.Looking back, for me, the significance of the brand was summed up by none other than the current CEO Jean Frederic Dufour (in a 2012 interview with Ivan Radja as the then CEO of Zenith with Worldtempus): Founded in 1865, the brand was one of the first to embed its craftsmanship in an industrial framework, along with Omega or Longines. I could tell you for hours what Zenith was at the beginning of the 20th century. It was even the company that brought electricity to Le Locle. It accompanied the rise of the railway and the aircraft industry. After his Channel crossing, Louis Bleriot recommended the Zenith altimeter!'Credit ? Fondation du Grand Prix D’horlogerie de Gen¨¨veCredit where credit's dueSo why does Zenith still not get the full attention of the collector community that this brand deserves? Perhaps it is mainly because the company ran into economic difficulties at the very time when its most famous baby was born, then fell into different hands again and again, until the true potential was recognised by the LVMH Group in 1999, which took over the manufacture and has been carefully but steadily building it up ever since. Who should know better how to build a brand than one of the richest people in the world, Bernard Arnault: especially with luxury products, continuity is key. Coupled with the right innovations and an awareness of its own history, Zenith could therefore rise to become the new collector’s star in the watch firmament in the coming years. The brand already has the star in its logo, and it has been impossible to imagine the hearts of connoisseurs without the brand for decades anyway. The reason for this lies in the history of the most famous movement in the world.The genesis of the world’s most famous movementAlthough most assume the year 1962 is the starting point of the house’s most famous watch, experts go back a little further. In the mid-fifties, Zenith watches were undisputedly at the forefront of watchmaking. In 1954, the famous Calibre 135 had already won the accuracy competition at the Neuchatel Observatory for the fifth time in a row.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEAfter the end of the Second World War, production had increased by 75 per cent. The pilot watches had earned an excellent reputation during the Second World War. They were now looking for future partnerships in a world where more and more Swiss competitors were merging into holdings and groups. At the end of 1958, the small watch company Martel Watch Co. asked for a collaboration, which Zenith gladly accepted, as Zenith had already been collaborating with this company for years in the domain of wristwatch chronographs.. After only a short time, it was clear that the Martel company and, above all, its know-how were needed: from 1959, the Martel Watch Co. was acquired by Zenith, and thus became Zenith Ponts-de-Martel workshops. These Zenith workshops manufactured both 3-hand watches and chronographs. This Zenith laboratory and workshop were to be set up to form the very team that would produce the world’s first automatic chronograph movement a good decade later.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGENo surprise for the 100th anniversaryThree years later, in 1962, the management of the time began to think about the company’s upcoming 100th anniversary in 1965. Zenith’s president had a feasibility study drawn up for a self-winding mechanical wristwatch chronograph.Under the direction of Raoul Pellaton, the specifications were written: AS if the challenge itself was not great enough no Swiss manufacture had ever mastered this complex undertaking before it soon also had to be a high-speed oscillating chronograph with 36,000 vibrations per hour! That was not all. As Manfred R?ssler lists in detail in his book, “El Primero – der Chronograph”, it was not allowed to be a modular chronograph, i.e. a hand-wound chronograph with a winding module, because the height was to be limited to 6.5 millimetres to become the thinnest chronograph on the market. Finally, it was also required to be able to measure tenths of a second, twice as accurately as conventional chronographs of the time! At the same time, it was also to be the fist modern' chronograph ever: Instead of filing the functions (as was done traditionally), the El Primero chronograph's components were to be stamped with such a precision that one only had to assemble it, and it would work directly. One thing quickly became clear to the engineers: it would not be for the company’s 100th anniversary; all in all, the development took seven long years and rumours soon began to circulate that they were not the only company intending to build such a watch.A competitor catalyses effortWhen rumours began to circulate in the Swiss watch world in 1967 that a strong collaboration of Breitling, Hamilton-Buren, Dubois-Depraz and Heuer-Leonidas was also working on a ground-breaking automatic chronograph, the news spurred Zenith’s engineers to want to be the first with the first (aka the name El Primero) for what they had been the first to start developing in the swiss industry. Internally, by the way, the project bore the rather plain name 3019 PHC, which is the name of the caliber. El Primero was the name of the line which would host this caliber at Zenith; Movado itself, the partner company Movado, with whom they had forged an alliance since 1967, was to use the name Datron HS 360 instead of El Primero to distinguish the two identities (even though Datron HS 360 were equally manufactured at Zenith).However, it was not due to the engineers that this race was won so narrowly, but much more to the management, which had to struggle with completely different challenges: unimaginable today in the field of luxury watches, it seemed perfectly clear to the industry at the time that, even when the rise of the quartz watch could not be forseen, the management efforts indeed were to be the first to introduce this innovation in the industry of watchmaking, and not let competitors (with additional modules instead of completely integrated automatic device) get past them on the finishing line. The quartz watchof which the first was fatefully presented in the same year as the movement of the El Primero, would change completely the game from then on . So was the world even ready for a mechanical automatic chronograph?One month makes a world of differenceOn 10 January 1969, the time had come: four weeks ahead of the competition, Zenith proudly unveiled its watch and movement: El Primero, the first'. Its movement was not only 1.2 millimetres thinner than the Calibre 11 revealed by the competition, but the movement, which had also become famous for the square TAG Heuer Monaco, only had a micro rotor and performed 19800 vibrations per hour. The press was unanimous: they celebrated the El Primero. Meanwhile, the competitors were looking for weak points for the then radically new approach. Was the dry lubrication system based on molybdenum sulphite durable enough? Did the bearings withstand the higher pressures? Yes, they did.A young sales agent in Zenith of the Benelux wanted to put an end to the criticism once and for all and, in cooperation with a Belgian newspaper and Air France, placed an El Primero in the landing gear well of a Boeing 707, where it had to survive a seven-hour long-haul flight between Paris and New York at temperatures ranging from 4 to -62 degrees Celsius and air pressure at 10,700 metres. The result: the El Primero was not the least bit bothered. Also a fine way to show its superiority to any quartz watches of that time, which wouldn't have resisted the drastic temperature difference.A wave of demandAll the more impressive was the wave of demand that now reached Zenith. For collectors of the first series, it might be interesting to know that Zenith did not opt for a standard model, but rather for small series or line of very different first designs, chronologically: The El Primero saw the light of day in gold and steel solely upon its launch followed by titanium at the beginning of the 1980s and then a few gold-plated models but only far later, at the end of the 1980s . And there is no end in sight to this day. At 54 years, this watch also holds the record for the longest continuously sold chronograph in watch history. A total of 21 (!) watch brands used this movement at least occasionally, including , Movado, Parmigiani, Tag Heuer, Ebel and Tiffany. Since the takeover by the LVMH Group in 1999, however, only the in-house brands are allowed to use this calibre, including above all Louis Vuitton in its Tambour, which is currently celebrating its 20th birthday.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGENumber of units in the early yearsIf you take a closer look at the overview in the above-mentioned El Primero book by Manfred R?ssler, two things stand out. Firstly, there are exactly 41 references in the period from 1969 to 1976, a lot for such a short period of time, which makes it clear that there were various models for the launch of the movement, but not the one model. Or maybe there was? The next paragraphs will try to find out which El Primero is the most iconic. These references, 12 of which were demonstrably launched in the first year, include a total of around 28,500 watches. That may seem like a lot, but by today’s standards it is nothing. Just for comparison: builds about one million watches per year. It is also not known how many early El Primero models have survived the last 50 years in good condition. Under the keyword Zenith El Primero, the world’s largest second-hand watch exchange, Chrono24.de, found 2,084 results at the time of this writing, of which only about ten per cent were from before 1999: exactly 224 watches. If you narrow it down to the first, important phase from 1969 to 1975, there are just 95 hits left, as I said, without regard to quality or the accuracy of the information. But this platform is always a good point of reference.A heroine called A386One of the bestsellers of those years was the reference A386 with a steel case, silver-plated dial and subdial counters in different colours. 4,500 examples of this watch were made. Why is this watch so important? Because it was the only one with a design feature that has become the second trademark of the manufacture, along with the star in the logo and the second hand.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEThe design of the dials – uniquely multicolouredLight grey, blue, anthracite. The three colours of one of the first series of the El Primero from 1969 have become true symbols of this icon. This is because the El Primero not only housed the most precise chronograph movement of its time, but also changed the view of modern watch design. It represents the first break with the design codes of the 1960s ¨Cpredominantly monochrome dials and round watch cases and elegantly displays the three counter colours that were to become its trademark. A light grey for the seconds, a strong blue for the minutes and a deep anthracite tone for the hours recall the brand’s constant effort to make visible the utmost precision by emphasising precisely these three timekeeping parameters – an exception at the time, when chronographs' counter featured usually one single colour.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEZenith has done well to elevate this model to the status of icon. And it is likely that it will be this model that will win the race with collectors in the future. In the Zenith anniversary book from 2015, seven other references are shown, which on the one hand can be found in modern case and model variants of the house, and on the other hand now exist as Revivals, not exact reissues (to distinguish them from the original models).Rare references from the early yearsEven though the Zenith Heritage Department thankfully pointed out to us that all unit numbers are only approximations and not finally confirmed, we still want to reveal what we know here, simply because these models are so rare: Firstly, there is reference G381, an 18-carat gold chronograph with chocolate-brown subdial counters (actually black originally but many of them have turned tropical, but this never was their original colour), of which 1,000 were made from 1969 to 1972. Then there is reference G582, also gold, of which only 600 exist with a gold-coloured dial. Then there is the reference A384 in stainless steel, 3850 of which were produced, with a very angular case, which is now on the market as the Chronomaster Revival. With the references A781 (red dial, steel case, produced 1,000 times), Zenith introduced the now important Defy designs in the El Primero line, which is also used for one of the most sought-after models of the time: the so-called El Primero “ESPADA” of reference A7817 with day, date, month and moonphase was built only 1105 times between 1972 and 1975 and also represented the first triple complication variation of the El Primero. For the sake of completeness, the two prototype series of 10 pieces each of the Chronomaster series with full calendar and moon phase should also be mentioned, although they do not bear numbers and were introduced in 1970. since they never appeared in catalogues from the time.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEThe last references mentioned here, the A787 with 105 pieces in steel and the gold reference G7810 with 250 gold pieces, should only be mentioned here because Zenith has currently reissued exactly this case type with its Defy Revival Model a 250-piece new edition, albeit as a classic Defy 3-hands automatic watch without chronograph function having served as an inspiration for the later Defy-Skyine line.The shock of 1975Unfortunately, progress often overtakes itself, which is easier to understand for readers of the digital age than for older generations, since it is much more common today for a genuine innovation to seem worthless within a few years (remember Nokia mobile phones or the website Second Life?). For even if the first beginnings of the El Primero looked promising, the watch market had changed worldwide. From 1969, the need for accurate timekeeping was also met by quartz watches, whose prices fell just as quickly as their accuracy increased. The most famous movement in history almost ended up as the most expensive flop in the world of mechanical watches: in 1975, production was stopped by decree from the USA. The shocking news came from the USA because Zenith had been taken over by the Zenith Radio Cooperation in the USA in 1971. The Americans regarded mechanical watches as obsolete and considered the machines, movements and tools to be obsolete as well.6 months of work in return for immortalityIt is indeed thanks to the conviction of one man, watchmaker Charles Vermot, that the story of the El Primero nevertheless became one of the greatest success stories in watchmaking history, even if the world had to wait almost a decade for it (9 years to be precise). From the beginning of his career, the watchmaker worked for the brand and was not above writing to Americans himself to protest when the shocking news reached him. The decision to stop production had been taken so abruptly that huge numbers of unfinished calibres were in the warehouse, along with their data sheets. He was unsuccessful in his request to get a dedicated space to insure the conservation of the tools and plans needed to possibly relaunch the El Primero.. With the liquidation of the manufacturing plant in Pont-de-Martel, Vermot took a lonely but all the more courageous decision: he began by meticulously archiving all the production processes and, above all, hiding the 150 punching presses that were needed to produce the original movement parts. To do this, he had all the production documents, machines, plans and production tools walled up in the attic of the factory in Le Locle, assisted by his brother, also a Zenith employee. A horological treasure that had to be unearthed at some point but when?Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGERebirth in another iconSo, while tool parts worth many millions of euros today were dozing away in the upper room of the manufacture, a lot was happening on the floors below. In 1978, Zenith returned to Swiss ownership. In 1984, the time seemed right for a comeback: 15 years after its launch, the revival of the mechanical began in Switzerland. It was, among others, the president of Ebel, Pierre-Alain Blum, who learned in 1981 of the existence of unfinished El Primero movements and wanted to use them for some of his watches. Specifically, it was about El Primero movements with moonphase, the calibre 3019 PHF. When he learned that there were other movements, he also bought the 3019 PHC movement without moonphase directly from Zenith. Why was this possible? At Zenith, several thousand such movements were waiting to be completed at the time. Old movements don’t just have a half-life. For Ebel, this move was clever because producing its own chronographs was considered far too risky at the beginning of the comeback of mechanical watches. Of course, Zenith did not have the means for a chronograph production line at that time to guarantee the assembly of the movements; they worked together with the supplier of competitors, Lemania. For a good three years, Ebel was supplied with an increasing number of chronograph movements, which did not go unnoticed by the rest of the watch world. In watchmaking, Switzerland is a village where nothing ever stays hidden from others for long.Credit ? Antiquorum a giant needs helpThrough an intermediary, a member of the Wilsdorf family, the owners of long before became a foundation, was contacted. wanted to revive its Daytona model, which at the time was powered by the robust but ageing hand-wound Valjoux 72 calibre. For , the Zenith movement was interesting in two respects: it had automatic winding, and was thin enough to fit the aesthetics of cases (thanks to the fact that it's complication and oscillating mass had been designed to be integrated with the rest of the movement from the start). Now the elaborate development of yesteryear was paying off! It also had the subdial counter arrangement in the same position as the existing Daytona at 3,6 and 9 o’clock.Credit ? However, was also initially sceptical about the high-frequency of the El Primero in terms of longterm durability. Everything revolved around longevity and low after-sales costs for the Genevans, as the number of pieces at was already very large at that time an important argument. And above all: was used to working with the 4 hz alternance of 28'800 vph in terms of after sales service.The golden hour of Charles VermotIn 1984, a press for factory parts cost around 40,000 Swiss francs, so the more than 150 stamping tools needed to restart El Primero production would have cost around 7 million Swiss francs. It was unthinkable for Zenith to resume production and reproduce these tools. Now they remembered the former rebel Charles Vermot and were relieved to find that he had done a great job: his incredible meticulousness of stockpiling helped Zenith to become a worthy contractual partner for . In 1984, they signed a supply contract for 10 years. The hero of the time received a goldplated El Primero chronograph and a trip to the USA,where he chose to go himself. As a matter of fact, despite some people love to say these days, he received a little more than that over the years: He also had the honours of the Maison, with invitations to speak publicly, many dinner invitations with the direction, and so on, like the VIP he now finally was.The watchmakers at Zenith, on the other hand, had to roll up their sleeves and assemble a high-precision mechanical chronograph for , an extremely demanding customer. The movements were to be manufactured at Zenith for and then handed over to in Le Locle. Vermot showed them all the resources he had carefully preserved and documented so that the Technical Bureau could take it again from there.What distinguishes the El Primero from the Daytona decided to modify the El Primero movements to fit its own corporate habit. After all, he who pays the piper calls the shots. A few important changes were introduced, some of them patent pending. It was not only decided to omit the date but to keep the Zenith balance in Glucidur. also decided that instead of the regulating organ, the Microstella regulator should be installed, which used in most of its movements. The new, larger balance reduced the frequency to 28800 vibrations per hour, which also meant that the escapement system could be lubricated in the conventional way. The flat hairspring was replaced by a Breguet hairspring and the movement received a column wheel with more teeth. The flywheel mass of the winding rotor was changed as well. All this was done in Zenith’s own workshops.. But Zenith did not just assemble El Primero movements for after having retrieved their production tools: they relaunched the production of their own Zenith El Primeros (as complete watches), with the Zenith specifications (36000 instead of 28800 vph, the date, Zenith column wheel, flat hairspring, etc.) at the exact same time. The Heroine was back!Everyone swears by El Primero – and then LVMH comes along.The Zenith- collaboration started with the launch of the Daytona and reference 16520 in 1988 with the calibre 4030 and ended at the millennium with the launch of the first in-house calibre 4130 in reference 116500. As watch expert and auctioneer Aurel Bacs writes at Phillips: “Zenith was thus thrown into one of the largest chronograph producers in the world.” The portfolio of brands supplied at the end of the nineties and the very beginning of 2000 included everything of distinction: Panerai, Boucheron and Daniel Roth had reliable access to El Primero movements made in Le Locle. One of the better known but no less interesting comeback version of the early El Primero models for collectors is the stainless steel version that was created in 1988: Signor De Luca was a Zenith retailer, who worked under the supervision of Zenith's head of the southern Italian market. It earned him the internal nickname de Luca collectors used to talk about this model and its different variations LucaLucaLucaIn addition to white and black dials, there were numerous variants that delighted fans of watches with the look of chronographs for almost six years, but with the knowledge that they were wearing a very special Zenith with an Italian touch. With the relaunch of the El Primero Zenith presented a first 100-meter water-resistant model with diver’s bezel and screw-down crown and pushers was created, followed in 1990 by a model with tachymeter scale (De Luca II) which presented an alternative to the Daytona.The Nineties: Back to the roots,. Collectors have simply called Daytonas Zenith Daytonas' since this era. Along with the De Luca', two of the equally important El Primero models of the pre-LVMH era should also be mentioned here: with the Rainbow, they introduced a collection in 1992 that was intended to keep up with Omega and Breitling. It was sporty and elegant with sapphire crystal, fixed diver’s and tachymeter bezels, and fitted with seals that made these watches reliably waterproof, thus meeting the taste of the times. The positive experiences of the De Lucca series were also incorporated into these models. From then on, the German press, in particular, celebrated the resurrected living legend. In addition to this, the decision was made in 1995 to launch the Chronomaster series, which paved the way towards the future even more clearly as a luxury line. These watches not only had a transparent screw-down caseback, but were aso all certified chronometers (and still are) by the Swiss chronometer testing agency COSC.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEA movement that is over 50 years old, how can that work?When production of the El Primero with 36,000 vibrations per hour was picked up again for its own products in the 1980s, there were only a few significant changes. The original calibre had 282 components, and Zenith 3019 PHC was chosen as the calibre name. The number 30 stands for the movement diameter, the third digit for the chronological numbering of different calibres with the same diameter, and the fourth indicates the type of movement, in this case the chronograph (9). These letters are a legacy of the Martel Watch Workshops, which had become the Zenith Ponts-de-Martel Workshops in the meantime. The letters P stand for Perpetual (rotor winding), H for Hour (hour counting) and C for the English word for calendar. The complication variant with day of the week, month and moon phase was called 3019 PHF. Of course, some early models were offered as Movado watches, since Movado was part of Zenith until 1983.When Zenith started producing mechanical movement components again in 1984 and also remanufactured the El Primero calibre, it was given the designation Calibre 400. In a first step, only the shock protection was changed.Credit ? ZENITH HERITAGEYou can recognise a true classic by constant improvementsFurther changes approved by the R&D department in 1998, shortly before the takeover by LVMH, mainly concerned the chronograph bridge, the addition of 20 teeth and a spoke to the fourth wheel, which previously had 100 teeth and 5 arms vs 120 teeth and 6 arms now respectively, the reduction of the number of teeth of the escapement from 21 to 20 and the addition of a blade to the pinion. In addition, the horns of the lever fork were modified and widened a little.Too complicated? These innovations mainly prevented a rare phenomenon due to an unlikely but possible, unfortunate juxtaposition of teeth that sometimes blocked the running of the watch when it had stopped. This was more a problem in the perception of the wearers, who thought the watch was damaged when it was not. These improved calibres were given the designation 400, 405 and 420 with an appended Z, e.g. 420/Z.In their original version, i.e. the calibres 3019 PHC and PHF from 1969, the movements are at the same time far removed from today’s movements and yet very close to the original El Primero. How does that work together? For one thing, the manufacturing techniques for movement parts have changed massively since 1969; for example, the first CNC milling machines were not introduced in Switzerland until the mid-1980s, while at the same time the concept of the El Primero remains untouched to this day.Of course, there have always been improvements in the details, which insn't surprising for a movement that has been around for 53 years. If you compare the El Primero with a car engine, it would be like driving a new Porsche 911 with a boxer engine from 1969 with 110 hp and a four-speed gearbox instead of a six-cylinder with 385 hp and a double-clutch gearbox. Credit ? ZENITHEL Primero Flyback – a big shot for a chronographIn 1995, responding to a call for tenders from the French Ministry of Defence and seeing an opportunity to win a major defence contract, Zenith relatively spontaneously launched an important further development of the El Primero calibre to include a flyback function. After all, this was a mandatory requirement in the contract. Even though the tender came to nothing, the development was maintained and after the presentation at Baselworld in spring 1997, the first El Primero Fly-back watches, fitted with the 405 caliber, were delivered in November.At the end of the nineties, these El Primero Rainbow Flyback represented the ultimate skills that Zenith had to offer. Manfred R?ssner virtually celebrates it in his book and raves about the design, which was worked out in collaboration with aviation experts, and the technical advantages: 100-metre water-resistant, satin-finished steel case, sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides make the watch absolutely competitive even today. In total, the two most distinctive Rainbow Flybacks with the calibre 405 and the colour-designed sub-dial in green, yellow and blue were built around 5650 times in accordance with classic aviation codes.1999: the millennium begins with a bangAll these developments did not go unnoticed by a new player in the field of fine mechanics, the head of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, who subsequently acquired Zenith in 1999. In 2001, the takeover became legally effective and Thiery Nataf, a newcomer to the industry and previously marketing director at the champagne house Veuve Clicquot, now took over. He immediately re..................