Shareholders pushing Heineken to hire new CEO from outside the company
Two major Heineken shareholders are pushing the Dutch brewer to appoint an outsider to succeed CEO Dolf van den Brink, breaking the long-standing tradition of promoting internal candidates, according to the Financial Times. They’re also urging the company to provide quick clarity on who will replace the departing CEO.
Portfolio manager Julien Albertini of First Eagle Investments, one of Heineken’s ten largest shareholders, told FT that Van den Brink’s departure was regrettable, but it has presented an opportunity for the board to appoint someone with a “fresh pair of eyes.”
He thinks an outsider can help turn the company around. “My preference would be maybe to bring someone from the outside,” Albertini told the British financial newspaper.
Daniel J. O’Keefe of Artisan Partners, another top 15 shareholder at Heineken, gave a similar statement. He said he hopes that Heineken will appoint someone external as CEO, but he worries that it will be impossible to find an “exceptional” candidate.
“They’re a Dutch family control company, so they will have to hire someone who’s Dutch,” O’Keefe said, adding that Heineken won’t “pay what would be required [for] a truly talented and exceptional executive.” According to O’Keefe, the brewer is “destined to get someone fairly mediocre, which has been the history of the company.”
Heineken is owned by the De Carvalho-Heineken family. The family holds a majority stake and five of the eight seats on the holding company’s board of directors. In the 87 years that Heineken has been listed on the stock exchange, the company has never appointed a complete outsider as its CEO and has only once appointed a non-Dutch chairman.
Sources inside the Dutch brewer told FT that Van den Brink’s sudden announcement that he would depart as CEO surprised the board of directors. They had expected him to stay on as CEO for another two or three years and didn’t have an internal successor ready.
The sources said that the board has two main internal candidates - Dutchman Jacco van der Linden, who heads Heineken’s Asia-Pacific operations, and the British Glenn Caton, who heads the European operations - but some board members worry that they are not ready for the role.
According to them, some board members also want to break with tradition and recruit the new CEO from outside the company.
