Four more years for Belgian CEO who doubled Heineken's turnover

If all shareholders approve the decision, and it is to be expected they do, Jean-François Van Boxmeer will continue as Heineken‘s CEO for another 4 years. Under his guidance, the Dutch company’s turnover doubled.

Architect of the acquisition strategy

The 55 year-old – who this week was named one of the world’s best CEO’s – took charge of Heineken in 2005 and under his control, the company became the world’s second largest brewery (trailing the unattainable AB InBev) and doubled its 10.8 billion euro turnover to 20.5 billion euro.

Van Boxmeer is the architect of Heineken’s acquisition strategy, which helped it to the top: in 2008, he acquired Scottish & Newcastle and Belgian Alken-Maes (Maes Pils, Affligem, Cristal, Grimbergen). Two years later, he bought Mexican brewer Femsa and another two years later, he obtained full control over Asian beer group Asia Pacific Breweries. Plenty of achievements that have motivated the company to ask him to add another four years’ at the top. 

54 million hectoliters in third quarter

The third quarter was also a good one for Heineken: sales grew 2 % to 54 million hectoliters and Heineken itself added 3.5 % and currently represents 8.4 million hectoliters. Its craft beers have also done better than the group’s average, while regionally, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe suffered a 3.6 % slump. Asia however achieved the largest growth, at 15 %.

Heineken did not reveal any turnover results, but it did state that the group’s net profit (in the first 9 months) reached 1.2 billion euro, quite a bit lower than the 1.7 billion euro net profit from last year. That slump is largely due to the selling of Mexican packaging company Empaque in 2015, which brought in 379 million euro as a one-time income.