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François-Henri Pinaults PPR, the owner of a number of high-fashion brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, increased its stake in the Sowind Group to 50.1 percent from 23 percent over the summer, gaining a controlling stake in the Swiss family-owned watchmaker group.

For Sowind, which owns the high-end watch brands Girard-Perregaux and JeanRichard, the benefits of coming into the PPR fold were “huge” in terms of growth capacity and marketing, said Stefano Macaluso, managing director of Girard-Perregaux and son of the founder of Sowind, Luigi Macaluso, who unexpectedly died last year.

The decision to join the PPR group was already discussed by my late father,” Mr. Macaluso said in a recent interview in Singapore. “The choice was a good one. We needed more power to develop the brand, but there is also a good fit because both entities, PPR and Sowind, have a family business feeling. PPR was the only solution to maintain this mix of group management, as well as family business. With another group, I think it would have been very difficult to cooperate in the same way and to maintain the coexistence.

PPR has many brands, but they leave a very large autonomy in terms of strategy and operation,” he said.Although PPR appointed a new chief executive for the Sowind Group in August, with Mr. Macaluso remaining managing director for Girard-Perregaux, and his brother, Massimo, remaining managing director for JeanRichard and the Manufacture, Mr. Macaluso said the decision to appoint a group C.E.O. had been made before joining PPR. “We wanted to strengthen management,” he said.

Mr. Macaluso believes Girard-Perregaux will be able to benefit from PPRs advertising might. “PPR is a big media advertiser, which gets preferential advertising rates,” he said. “They also have a very efficient administration system, so we can have access to many kinds of logistic and IT services.”

But the Sowind acquisition also helps position PPRs luxury group in the high-end watchmaking segment where it had not been present. “PPR gets entrance into watches, a part of the luxury goods industry with second-to-none exposure to China,” said Jon Cox, an analyst in Zurich for Kepler Capital Markets.