Diageo's Debra Crew becomes highest profile female CEO in Britain and Ireland

A former boss of tobacco company Reynolds American, Debra Crew is expected to embrace Ivan Menezes’ legacy and ride the wave of consumers switching to expensive spirits from beer and wine. Picture: Diageo

Guinness and spirits maker Diageo named former tobacco boss Debra Crew to succeed Ivan Menezes as chief executive and become the highest-profile female executive in Britain and Ireland. 

Ms Crew, 52, will make the leap from her current role of chief operating officer, after Mr Menezes retires following a decade at the helm of the distiller of Baileys, Smirnoff and Black Label whisky.  

A former boss of tobacco company Reynolds American, Ms Crew is expected to embrace Mr Menezes’ legacy and ride the wave of consumers switching to expensive spirits from beer and wine. The challenge will be persuading drinkers to continue the shift amid a cost-of-living crisis. 

Ms Crew also worked at PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Nestle, and Mars.  She has an MBA from the University of Chicago and served as an officer in the US army.

“We think investors will consider her to be a safe pair of hands,” Investec analyst Alicia Forry wrote in a note to clients.

“We believe the strategy will be one of evolution, not revolution,” said Citi analyst Simon Hales. Diageo shares fell in the latest session and are now down 7% from a year ago. 

Ms Crew’s tenure at Reynolds was cut short by British American Tobacco’s takeover, but her experience will be useful in navigating the complex web of alcohol regulations across the globe.

Scotland is considering a ban on advertising alcohol, which could shutter Diageo’s Johnnie Walker experience — a visitor centre dedicated to the 200-year-old whisky. And in India, a fast growing market for Diageo, alcohol regulation is set by state.

Ms Crew was widely expected to succeed Mr Menezes since she was picked to become chief operating officer last July.

“This has been amongst the most orderly succession planning we can remember in consumer staples,” James Edwardes Jones, an analyst at RBC, said “We won’t eulogise too much about Ivan, other than to say that his tenure has been seriously successful.”

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Diageo shares almost doubled on Mr Menezes’s watch. The 63-year-old executive, who joined through the merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1997, will leave at the end of June. 

During Mr Menezes’ decade of leadership, Diageo became synonymous with premium spirits, acquiring brands like George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila. 

Now, more than half of the company’s sales come from premium plus drinks — costing more than €50 a bottle — part of a push by leading spirits makers to get consumers to spend more without increasing their alcohol intake.

The industry is resilient, according to Mr Menezes, because alcoholic beverages are reserved for special occasions for most people and they represent a small proportion of household budgets.

The distiller deftly navigated the pandemic, cutting marketing spending and switching its focus to at-home drinking while supporting the bars and restaurants it needed to still be in business when lockdowns ended. 

Bloomberg