Hansjorg Wyss Biography & Net Worth 

Hansjorg Wyss is a billionaire businessman and investor from Switzerland. Born on September 19, 1935, in the Swiss capital Bern, this noteworthy entrepreneur made his wealth through Synthes, a company founded by him in the 1970s which specializes in manufacturing medical devices. Educated at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Wyss later studied in the United States, attending Harvard Business School as he was determined to develop his career. He has been based in the United States since the 1960s. As well as medical manufacturing, his career has also seen him sell aircraft, work in the steel industry, and also serve in government infrastructure services. He founded Wyss Foundation, which, as of today, has more than $2 billion in assets. More details follow below.

Early Life: Childhood, Education

Hansjörg Wyss was born on 19 September 1935 in Bern, Switzerland. While his father sold mechanical calculators, his mother was a homemaker. He grew up alongside his two sisters.

After receiving a master’s degree in engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 1959, he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1965 before starting his vocation properly.

Professional Life: Business Career

Following his graduation from Harvard, Wyss worked in various positions in the textile industry. He worked as a project manager and plant engineer for Chrysler in the Philippines, Pakistan, and Turkey. Likewise, he worked in the steel industry in Belgium for a while, during which time he ran a side business selling airplanes. Through one sale, he was opportune to meet a surgeon who had co-founded the medical device manufacturer Synthes in Switzerland. After that meeting, Wyss spent nearly two years learning about the medical device industry.

In 1977, Mr. Hansjorg Wyss founded Synthes USA and became its president. The company was a division of the Switzerland-based Synthes, a then-thriving medical device manufacturer specialized in making internal screws and plates for broken bones. Under Wyss’ leadership, the United States division expanded its sales team and trained experts on how to use its products. Wyss served as the company’s worldwide chairman and chief executive officer until his resignation as chief executive officer in 2007. He maintained his role as company chairman until the company was sold to Johnson & Johnson in 2012 for $19.7 billion in cash and stock.

On May 6, 2022, Chelsea F.C. of the English Premier League announced that the club agreed to terms with a new group of owners, of which Wyss is a member.

Synthes Holding AGis a multinational medical device manufacturer based in Switzerland and United States. It is the world’s largest maker of implants to fix bone fractures, and also produces surgical tools and advanced biomaterials.

Personal Life: Family, Residence, Private Interests

Mr. Wyss lives in Wyoming, the United States. Nothing is known about his spouse other than the fact that they are married and have a daughter named Amy, who is a resident of Wyoming also.

This industrious businessman is a hiker, skier, and backpacker, as well as a hobby pilot. He is also a rancher, who in 2000, purchased the 900-acre Halter Ranch and Vineyard in California. Nowadays, the ranch hosts tours and sees hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. In 2015, it was named “Best Vineyard Experience” by Sunset Magazine.

Philanthropic Works

Asides from the popularity he built through the success of his medical device manufacturing business, Mr. Wyss is known for his philanthropy. He has donated money to a variety of causes, including education, climate initiatives, and conservation efforts.

He established the Wyss Foundation in 1998 as an environmental protection project, focused on preserving, in particular, Wyoming’s Hoback Basin area so that inhabitants of the city could continue to enjoy outdoor pursuits, such as fishing and hiking, there.

In 2008, he donated the sum of $125 million to his alma mater Harvard for the building of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

It is reported that his charitable foundation which collaborated with several celebrities such as Leonardo Di Caprio, has more than $2 billion in assets.

Hansjorg Wyss Net Worth

Hansjorg Wyss’ net worth was estimated at $5 billion dollars in 2022, according to American business magazine Forbes. His wealth primarily came from the operation of Synthes and it was boosted significantly when he sold that company.

Forbes has revealed that Mr. Wyss is “among the most philanthropic people in the world”. According to various reports, between 2004 and 2008, around 277 million dollars was personally donated by the businessman and this boosted the consecutive sales of his medical device company Synthes in 2012. In the year 2013, he joined other wealthy people in the world in signing The Giving Pledge which consented to donate the majority of his fortune.