Skip to main content

Swarco founder Manfred Swarovski dies

Manfred Swarovski, founder and CEO of Swarco, has passed away at the age of 77. The company’s executive board confirmed that he died on 13 May. Swarco says it has lost a mastermind who managed to bring his group of companies to world renown in the field of road safety and intelligent traffic management over nearly half a century. The company expressed condolences to Swarovski’s wife Elisabeth, sons Alexander, Philipp and Manfred, and to his brothers and sisters. Swarovski had planned his succession by
May 15, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

Manfred Swarovski, founder and CEO of 129 Swarco, has passed away at the age of 77. The company’s executive board confirmed that he died on 13 May.

Swarco says it has lost a mastermind who managed to bring his group of companies to world renown in the field of road safety and intelligent traffic management over nearly half a century.

The company expressed condolences to Swarovski’s wife Elisabeth, sons Alexander, Philipp and Manfred, and to his brothers and sisters.

Swarovski had planned his succession by handing over his responsibilities to executive board members over the past few years. They will run the company operationally in close alignment with the supervisory board, Swarco said.

The company started in 1969 in Austria with a small factory producing reflective glass beads. Today, the international traffic technology organisation employs 3,700 people and generates annual revenue of €675m.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Oregon tests new mileage-base charging scheme
    August 5, 2013
    Jack Opiola from D’Artagnan Consulting LLP explains Oregon’s latest moves which mandated a trial of mileage-based road use charging. In 1919, Oregon made the 20th century’s most significant contribution to transportation funding policy, becoming the first state in America to implement a gas tax to pay for roads. This summer Oregon’s Legislature passed, and Governor John Kitzhaber signed into law, Senate Bill 810 which requires a distance-based road usage charge for 5,000 volunteer vehicles by 1 July 2015. T
  • Foundation funds research for informed campaigning
    April 29, 2015
    ITS International talks to Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the transport research and lobbying organisation, the RAC Foundation. It is through the eyes of an economist that Professor Stephen Glaister, emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and director of the RAC Foundation, views current and future transport problems. Having spent 30 years at the London School of Economics and another 10 at Imperial, the move to the RAC Foundation was a radical departure from
  • Air quality tops transportation agendas
    November 17, 2014
    Colin Sowman catches up on some of the latest research around outdoor pollution and looks at options available to authorities in areas of poor air quality. Iair quality hasn’t already reached the top of the agenda in transportation department meetings in your area, it probably soon will with national, trans-national and even global bodies calling for authorities to reduce pollution levels.
  • Changing driving conditions need ongoing driver training
    January 23, 2012
    Trevor Ellis, chairman of the ITS UK Enforcement Interest Group, considers the role of ongoing driver training in increasing compliance. It is over 30 years since I passed my driving test. The world was quite a different place then, in that there were only half the vehicles there are now on the UK's roads, mobile phones did not really exist and (in the UK at least) the vast majority of us drove cars which by today's standards exhibited dreadful dynamic stability and were woefully underpowered.