In 1948, he married Lucille Cummins, the daughter of a whiskey-making family in Kentucky. In addition to his wife, Mr. Heineken is survived by his daughter, Charlene, and five grandchildren. November 1983 Freddy and his chauffeur were kidnapped and held for three weeks in concrete cells, with a ransom of $12 million demanded. You might say that one life ended and another began the day that Charlene de Carvalho buried her father. But the passion to maintain family control of a She came to Fortune reluctantly, coaxed by her outgoing, energetic 70-year-old husband, an investment banker who holds the vice chairman position at Citigroup’s investment bank and chairs Citi Private Bank in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region. Alfred Henry Heineken, who built an Amsterdam brewer into one of the world's biggest beer companies, died on Thursday at his home in the Dutch coastal town of Noordwijk. He didn’t win a medal. While the Dutch brewing industry was in serious decline at the time, Gerard had something no one else did – “Heineken A-yeast.” It was an innovative bottom-fermenting yeast method that Gerard would eventually patent. While Charlene had done an internship at Heineken in Paris many years previously, and eventually joined the Board of the family holding company, she had little interest in the details of the operation. Heineken still ranks as the world’s No. Charlene loathed fanfare as much as her father, a visionary businessman who had transformed a modest Dutch brewery into the world’s third-largest brewer. With that, she uprooted her tidy life in London, began traveling the globe to study Heineken’s far-flung operations, and learned how to become an effective owner and the guardian of a dynasty. This would become crucial to Heineken’s success for decades to come. In 1864, Charlene’s great-grandfather, Gerard Adriaan Heineken, bought a small brewery, De Hooiberg, in Amsterdam and began brewing beer with a special yeast. Despite Charlene’s lack of experience, she has shown, like her father, to possess exceptional business skills and intuition – and Heineken has witnessed exceptional growth and success. With a business as global as Heineken, could different children play different roles in different regions or business lines? You live in London, England and you’re the stay-at-home mother of five children. What outside resources can help your business remain family-controlled? Most evenings, Charlene and her parents would eat dinner on tray tables in the living room, in front of the TV. To understand Heineken and the woman who controls it, it helps to know a bit about the people who came before her. So, when SABMiller approached Heineken with a hefty takeover bid in 2014, the family rejected the offer, despite incredible pressures in the beer and beverage industry to consolidate. The server responded with {{status_text}} (code {{status_code}}). While Freddy had left business succession to chance, Charlene and Michel have wisely taken a more deliberate approach to their succession planning. She spent most evenings at home with her parents enjoying a TV dinner. Gerard’s only son, Henry Pierre, managed the company from 1917 to 1940. But Freddy surprised himself – and even Heineken’s management – by emerging as a successful salesman and developing a keen interest in the advertising strategy behind the product. One day, out of the blue, you get a call that your 78-year-old father in the  Netherlands is ill with pneumonia, and you rush to his bedside. It took Charlene less than a week to respond in the affirmative to her husband’s proposition. She visited her father regularly in the Netherlands and St. Moritz, where he struggled to breathe at the high altitude, no doubt due to his four-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Heineken was built on generations of ‘only’ children – and it was never a crowded playing field in terms of succession. His grandson Freddy would prove himself equally gifted in the art of persuasion, directing Heineken's advertising and marketing efforts. She interned at Heineken in Paris, where she followed the local boss around to get a taste for the family business. Your husband has a successful job in banking. Alexander joined the Heineken board in 2013, Charles is gaining experience working for an internet retailer in Vietnam, and Louisa is employed by a spirits company in London. After If you’re Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, you make the bold decision to step into your father’s shoes and run the family business. Use of this site is governed by our Legal Notice. Even though the server responded OK, it is possible the submission was not processed. Reversing Freddy’s risk aversion, which hampered Heineken’s growth in the old man’s later years, van Boxmeer has spent more than $28 billion on 49 acquisitions, extending Heineken’s operations from 39 countries in 2002 to 71 today. {{#message}}{{{message}}}{{/message}}{{^message}}Your submission failed. Once the challenges of the Second World War had passed, expansion beckoned and Freddy made a number of important advancements, both personally and professionally: On the personal front, Freddy also met and married an American woman named Lucille Cummins. In 1964, in honor of his father, he founded the Dr. H. P. Heineken Foundation, which awards cash prizes for pioneering work in biochemistry and biophysics. With $24.9 billion in 2013 revenue, the company has an enviable portfolio of premium brands such as Amstel, Dos Equis, Sol, and the eponymous green-bottled lager that is the most widely distributed beer on earth. Charlene had not thought much about her new responsibilities until that dreary morning at the cemetery. “I don’t think he thought much beyond my having a happy, comfortable life,” she says. Charlene and Michel, who is a Heineken director, called on the board to replace the then-CEO with a more aggressive leader. Working together, Charlene and Michel quickly become familiar with the business after Freddy’s death. Copyright © 2020, Post Courier Online. Charlene had long prided herself on leading a private life. “Society,” she says, “is a horrible word.” Had Freddy’s only child been named Charles instead of Charlene, he probably would have been pushed into the family business. This was both impressive and surprising for two reasons: But the “family first” motto by which Charlene had led her life also included a strong dedication to preserving a family-controlled business that, at that time, was 138 years old. She was content as a stay-at-home mom to her five children. The Road Traffic Authority (RTA) is working with relevant stake holders to open up new public motor vehicle (PMV) routes in Port Moresby to complement the city’s growing population. So this was a simple ceremony in an ordinary cemetery, with no funeral preceding it, attended only by Freddy’s secretary and his immediate family: Freddy’s wife, Lucille; his son-in-law, Michel; and 47-year-old Charlene. You lead a good life. They visited many Heineken breweries and offices, assessing talent, talking to employees and identifying opportunities. In She enjoyed a virtually anonymous private life. But he loved competing, and he went back to the Olympics as a member of Britain’s luge team in 1972 and 1976. “It’s not a very crowded legacy,” he says. 3 brewer, behind Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller, but sales have nearly tripled. Henry Pierre had three children – Mary, Alfred and Robert. And this prompts a number of considerations. Charlene met Michel de Carvalho on the ski slopes of St. Moritz. Freddy Heineken had his own article of faith: that a proper lager cannot be made in fewer than 60 days, while most of its rivals would settle for 21 or even 14. “In his dreams, I would have married a nice Dutch boy and lived next door,” she says. In 1960, the company sold a million cases of beer in the United States; 40 years later, the company sold more than 53 million cases, according to Impact, a beverage industry publication. It was a gray day in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in January 2002 when the London housewife and mother of five bid goodbye to Freddy Heineken. Before she sat down with Fortune in Amsterdam for this story, she had never spoken with the media. When police were finally able to free him, the Heineken family had already paid $10 million to the kidnappers. In addition to his wife, Mr. Heineken is survived by his daughter, Charlene, and five grandchildren. Instead, she and Michel have hired a family consulting firm to meet with the children and discuss both their aspirations and concerns about the Heineken legacy. His son, Alfred, known as Freddy, started working at the brewer, carrying sacks of barley, at 18. She enjoyed the support and business expertise of Michel (a well-seasoned banking executive at Credit Suisse) – and she had her own fierce determination to protect, nurture and grow the family legacy and brand. In 1954, he succeeded in regaining the family's controlling interest in the brewing company, which his father had sold in 1942. You can find out more about our privacy policy, and terms and conditions. From her earliest days, Charlene gravitated towards an anonymous lifestyle – happy to be unrecognizable to even Heineken staff. Perhaps you’ve never heard of Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, and that has suited her just fine. In addition to dealing with the grief of losing a parent, you’re now faced with two new developments in your life: an inheritance of more than $6 billion, and a controlling interest in one of the world’s largest and most iconic breweries. In November, he resigned as chairman of the holding company that owns a majority stake in Heineken N.V. His daughter, Charlene, was supposed to take over some of Mr. Heineken's responsibilities at a shareholders meeting in April, but will now do so immediately, the company said. They installed a new, more aggressive CEO, and have overseen more than 50 acquisitions worth nearly $30 billion. At age 20 she left the Netherlands. This suited Charlene’s personality just fine. Heineken, which says it was the first brewer to export to the United States after Prohibition, had particularly strong growth in the American market. In the meantime, the children are gaining valuable work experience. Today he calls Charlene “my boss.” Michel’s proposition the day of Freddy’s burial was, she says, “my wake-up call.” And in fact, the transfer of control from Freddy to his daughter was a wake-up call for Heineken too. In September, London-based SABMiller made an unsolicited bid for the company. In the 1980's, Mr. Heineken started a second foundation in his own name that awards cash prizes to the sciences and the arts. “Charlene, you have to make a decision within 10 days if you want to inherit the role that your father played.” What Michel de Carvalho was suggesting was that Charlene, who had had no formal business education, guide the family company that Freddy, even after stepping down as CEO in 1989, had helped build to $9.3 billion in annual revenues.

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