Carlos Brito, who came down Anheuser-Busch InBev This week the 61-year-old is already preparing for his second long career. “Brito 2.0” could be as old as a hundred years ago, says a Brazilian businessman who has been selling beer for 30 years.
“My father… Was a surgeon until he was 86. I am 25 years ahead of me, at least 25 years old,” he said.
Brito built AB InBev from a Latin American player into the world’s largest brewery, with brands including Budweiser and Stella Artois.
But his final years were overshadowed by his biggest, most controversial deal, taking £ 79bn from his rival SABMiller in 2016. The stock price of AB InBev shares is more than 45% lower than at the end of the deal, and still has $ 83 bn debt.
AB InBev’s strong breakdown refers to the integration period that encouraged the growth of a few manufacturers around the world. Brito leaves the company – and companies – changed from their incumbent Brahma in 1989.
Trevor Stirling, a researcher at Bernstein, named him “one of the three most influential people in the modern-day brewing industry,” along with former Heineken leader Jean-François van Boxmeer and former SABMiller president Graham Mackay.
In many ways, the idea of Wall Street BritoThe history of their heritage is that of a former great man. “We started from Latin America, another European country, and we made a world beer. . . one of the top three CPGs [consumer packaged goods] companies in the world and the highest in profits “, he said.
“Obviously it has made a lot of difference for the shareholders,” Stirling admitted.
With AB InBev gathering from the worst epidemic – he says it has been better than expected results for the first quarter – Brito has paid tribute to Michel Doukeris, a well-known 25-year-old veteran of the digital business.
“It is very powerful; he is better than I am, ”said Brito, referring to his successors in Mexico, Brazil, China and the US.
Doukeris’ approach reflects AB InBev’s transformation into a global company, which Brito said would not be possible without SABMiller’s partnership. “It was the right thing to do,” he said, for a brewery who thinks “not for the next few years but for the next 50, 100 years.”
But he acknowledged that Covid-19 had introduced AB InBev’s debt-reducing measures for almost two years, and preferred to showcase the 2008 Anheuser-Busch takeover.
This happened before the financial crisis hit. “We needed 10 banks on the last day to raise a few billion dollars each and some banks were just running out every day,” he recalled. But as soon as AB ABBBB received the money, we “did not look back”.
Years of food production are over, Brito admitted, although the slightest damage continues. This, the researchers said, puts a lot of pressure on AB InBev to produce and grow naturally, even though its size did not contribute to its complete demise.
One example is the strong seltzer, an alcoholic beverage that brings the beverage market to the US abruptly. In 2016 AB InBev acquired the pioneer name, SpikedSeltzer, just to be defeated by White Claw and Truly; is still lagging behind in the market, although it found a market this year, according to Bernstein.
“I think that sometimes, maybe, it took us a long time to be able to make some changes,” Brito admitted, because the company’s growth made it less likely to consume its already large drivers.
Without acknowledging that the U.S. stock market is declining, it predicted that non-alcoholic beverages such as hard seltzer are growing. “The so-called fourth group, which is the explosion of alcohol, wine and alcohol. . . at risk[s] part of existing categories, inheritance categories.
The expectations of the superintendent were quickly changed as drinking habits during the Brito regime but said AB InBev could not be a “freedom fighter”, advocating for the impossible.
“The biggest problem today [is] that people think CEOs and companies should have an opinion on everything, ”he lamented.
Investors’ new views on the environment, culture and governance, or ESG, concerns may appear to be inconsistent with AB InBev’s adoption of a budget proposal. However Brito designed a 3G Capital program based on how each price should be renewed at any given budget time as a green company.
“Everyone. . . wants companies to take care of waste to reduce global warming. As a result, all of a sudden, doing well became a wonderful thing, ”he said.
Companies now need to understand that their communities “allow you to be present if you are part of the solution”, he said.
Brito urged governments not to raise taxes on companies like theirs to pay for their Covid-19, but to create goods for those who have benefited from the epidemic.
“When they raise taxes to pay for incentives and other Covid assets, they have to follow companies that need to share their assets because they have consumers who have been forced to go to them,” he said. Some businesses triple or quadruple the market value: “We didn’t.”
Brito did not settle for his next trip, but did not mention another major role, nor did he work with his mentor, the founder of his 3G colleague Jorge Paulo Lemann, who paid for his training and hired him at the bank for 20 years.
The music that Brito received after announcing his departure indicates that he will have “many choices”, he said, and wants to leave for July and August.
But he had no doubt that this was the right time to leave the company he had created. “We have to give it a new generation, otherwise they will go somewhere else,” he said. “If the CEO stays permanently, the machine won’t work.”
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