Hansjörg Wyss

Johann Georg Wyss known as Hansjörg Wyss (born 19 September 1935) is a Swiss billionaire businessman and donor to politically liberal and environmental causes in the United States.

He is the founder and the former president and chairman of Synthes Holding AG, a medical device manufacturer.

His Wyss Foundation has more than $2 billion in assets.

As of 2023, Wyss had a net worth of US$4.7 billion, according to Forbes.

Having donated hundreds of millions of dollars to environmental causes, he has more recently increased his donations to groups promoting progressive causes.

He is currently the co-owner of football club Chelsea.

Wyss was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1935.

His father sold mechanical calculators and his mother was a homemaker.

He was brought up in a flat with two sisters.

After receiving a master's degree in civil and structural engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 1959, Wyss earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1965.

Following that, he worked in various positions in the textile industry, including as a factory engineer and project manager for Chrysler in Pakistan, Turkey and the Philippines.

Wyss also worked in the steel industry in Brussels, Belgium.

During his time working in that industry, Wyss ran a side business selling airplanes.

Through one sale, he met a surgeon who had co-founded Swiss medical device manufacturer Synthes.

After that meeting, Wyss spent two years learning about the medical device industry.

He then founded and became president of Synthes USA in 1977.

In 1977, Wyss founded and became president of Synthes USA, the U.S. division of the Switzerland-based Synthes, a medical device manufacturer making internal screws and plates for broken bones.

He founded the company after meeting Martin Allgoewer, the founder of AO Foundation, and obtaining permission to sell the organization's devices in the Americas.

In an early initiative, Wyss opened a Synthes USA manufacturing plant in Colorado.

Prior to that, another Swiss company manufactured Synthes' devices and exported them to the U.S. Under Wyss' control, the U.S. division expanded its sales team and trained surgeons how to use its products.

Between 2004 and 2008, Businessweek estimated that Wyss personally donated nearly US$277 million.

Wyss served as Synthes' worldwide CEO and chairman until his resignation as CEO in 2007.

In 2009, top executives at Synthes were indicted by U.S. Attorneys for Eastern Pennsylvania for using an untested calcium-phosphate-based bone cement on human patients without authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

Use of the bone cement resulted in the deaths of three people.

Wyss was not indicted, but four top executives of Synthes were convicted and sentenced to prison terms.

He maintained his post as company chairman until Johnson & Johnson acquired Synthes in 2012.

During his tenure, Wyss said discussions of new products made up one-third of board meetings.

A manager assigned to the Norian project testified before a grand jury that "for somebody who is at his level and his level of success, I would say he [Wyss] has a surprising amount of contact with what's going on".

Staff recalled meetings in which he intensively probed their projects.

In 2012, Wyss sold the company for $19.7 billion in cash and stock to Johnson & Johnson.

According to Bloomberg, he received 97.4 million shares in Johnson & Johnson and $3.2 billion cash from the deal.

According to Forbes, Wyss is "among the most philanthropic people in the world".

His giving increased subsequent to the sale of Synthes in 2012.

In 2013, he signed The Giving Pledge, agreeing to give away the majority of his fortune.

The assets of his charitable foundations equal nearly $2 billion.

He has made major donations to environmental and scientific causes, as well as progressive organizations, including the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Health Leads and the Constitutional Accountability Center.

As of 2015, Wyss and the Wyss Foundation had donated more than $350 million to environmental protection, including conservation of national forests and other public lands in the Western United States.

In October 2018, Wyss published an article in The New York Times stating that he was contributing $1 billion to environmental causes.

In 2019, Wyss promised to donate 20 million swiss francs to the Bern Art Museum.

He made it a condition that the Hodlerstrasse, on which the museum is located, be free of cars.