Heineken's CEO Dolf van den Brink Resigns Amid Investor Pressure

Heineken's Leadership Change and Market Challenges

LONDON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Heineken said on Monday its CEO Dolf van den Brink would step down on May 31 after nearly six years of leading the Dutch brewer, as the industry battles to get drinkers buying more beer. 

Impact of CEO Resignation

Van den Brink took the helm at the world's No.2 beer maker in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020, and is also chair of its executive board. 

Current Market Conditions

Since his arrival, he has presided over a turbulent period marked first by the pandemic and then by huge cost inflation and falling sales that have hurt margins, the company's share price and investor returns. 

Future Strategies for Heineken

The board will now start a search to appoint a successor to lead Heineken, which makes its namesake lager alongside Tiger and Amstel, the company's statement said. Van den Brink has agreed to remain available as an advisor for eight months from June. 

Van den Brink and chairman of the supervisory board, Peter Wennink, said now was the right moment for Heineken to appoint new leadership. The company set a new strategy covering the years until 2030 in October. 

Heineken has "reached a stage where a transition in leadership will best serve the company in further executing its long-term ambitions", van den Brink said in the statement, adding he remains fully focused on executing that strategy until his departure.

Heineken's shares fell almost 3% in early trade. 

BEER SALES FALLING

Van den Brink is the latest in a string of consumer company CEOs to depart after a difficult few years for the sector as consumer finances came under strain from high costs of living. 

Brewers have struggled to sell more beer, with hopes of a sales revival repeatedly knocked off course by everything from bad weather to political uncertainty. 

Now, worries around the rise of new competitors, the emergence of weight-loss drugs that could weigh on food and drink sales, and shifting attitudes to drinking, especially among younger people, cloud the sector's future. 

Under van den Brink, Heineken has also faced a series of disruptions in key growth markets like Nigeria and Vietnam which have weighed on results, and has been punished by investors for years for missing the mark on its forward-looking guidance. 

Investors welcomed Heineken's strategic update in October, which will see the company make changes including focusing resources on certain brands and markets. But some told Reuters Heineken needs to prove it can deliver. 

Van den Brink arrived "with high expectations, but Heineken has not delivered on them", RBC Capital Markets analyst James Edwardes Jones said. "Perhaps this change at the top is what Heineken needs". 

(Reporting by Mateusz Rabiega in Gdansk and Emma Rumney in London; Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Jan Harvey)