AB InBev chief Brito to leave after 15 years in top job
World’s biggest brewer names head of its North America business Michel Doukeris as successor
Carlos Brito, who transformed a Brazilian regional brewer into the world’s largest beer maker Anheuser-Busch InBev, is to step down as chief executive of the group after 15 years.
AB InBev said Brito would relinquish his role to Michel Doukeris, president of the group’s North America business, on July 1 and leave the company after more than three decades.
The 60-year-old’s departure marks the end of an era for the brewing industry after Jean-François van Boxmeer stood down as chief executive of Heineken in 2020. Both helped drive the sector’s consolidation, acquiring regional players to create global powerhouses in brewing.
“Among his many accomplishments, Brito was the architect who led and built AB InBev into the world’s leading beer company and a leading global consumer packaged goods company by masterfully integrating the many businesses that comprise AB InBev today,” said Martin Barrington, chair of AB InBev.
The brewer of Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona had seriously considered outside candidates for the role, the Financial Times reported last year, but opted for Doukeris, another Brazilian who joined the group 25 years ago, rising through its sales hierarchy before running the Asian and North American businesses.
AB InBev said the board had unanimously elected Doukeris.
Brito’s departure comes as the company wrestles with the impact of the pandemic on top of a debt load that stood at $82.7bn at the end of 2020, incurred by its acquisition of SABMiller in 2016. The company cut its dividend in half in April last year.
It reported on Thursday that first-quarter revenues had risen 17.2 per cent, ahead of expectations, to $12.3bn, on a 13.3 per cent increase in beer volumes sold as global drinking and socialising started to recover from pandemic restrictions, generating $1.1bn of underlying profit.
Brito’s brewing career started in 1989 when he joined the Brazilian brewer Brahma, working for his mentor Jorge Paulo Lemann, founder of private equity firm 3G, who paid for his education at Stanford.
Brahma began a deal-led expansion, transforming into regional brewer Ambev. Brito took over as chief executive in 2004, and that same year the company merged with Belgium’s Interbrew, maker of Stella Artois, to create InBev. Four years later it carried out a hostile takeover of the US group Anheuser-Busch to become a global brewer.