New Carlsberg CEO has to deal with Russian crisis

Improve margins

Rasmussen will have led the company for seven years when he passes command to ‘t Hart. Carlsberg’s chairman of the board, Flemming Besenbacher, feels it is time to make some progress at the top of the company.

Cees ‘t Hart, who has 25 years of experience at Unilever, has been FrieslandCampina’s CEO since 2008 and handled Friesland Foods and Campina’s merger while considerably improving the dairy manufacturer’s profit margin. He will be asked to do similarly at Carlsberg.

Russian pressure

Carlsberg has just announced its full-year results: the devaluation of the Russian and Ukrainian currencies deeply affected the Danish brewer, as they are both rather important for the company’s turnover.

In 2014, Carlsberg sold 134.5 million hectoliters of beer, down 3 % on a year-on-year basis. Belgian specialty beer Grimbergen managed a large increase though, selling 27 % more in volume. Turnover reached slightly higher at 64.5 billion Danish krona (8.7 billion euro), mainly because of the negative exchange rate effects. Its net profit however dropped down 1 billion krona, to 4.4 billion krona (593 million euro).

Carlsberg has revealed it will have to make some tough decisions if the situation in Russia and Ukraine remains as it is. Only last month, it had already announced it would shut down two Russian factories.