Mihai Albu, one of the best-known Romanian executives in thebeer industry has been appointed regional chairman of StarBevproducer (the brand that will group the beer operations taken overby investment fund CVC Capital Partners from AB InBev i.e.), whichhas 2,500 employees and posted 470 million-euro turnover in2008.
Albu, 47, is thus back in the beer business almost one yearafter leaving the ABInBev (ABI) group, at which time he decided totake a sabbatical that he ended at the beginning of this year.
"On the 1st of January I became a member of the Group's Board ofDirectors and took over the position of regional chairman, fromwhich I supervise five countries: Romania, Bulgaria, CzechRepublic, Hungary and Slovakia, as well as the export operations ofthe entire StarBev group," Albu told ZF.
StarBev is based in Prague, a city where Mihai Albu had livedbefore, back when he was running the regional operations of Belgianbrewer InBev. InBev has gone through a number of important changesover the last three years starting from the takeover of theUS-based Anhseuser-Busch group for 52 billion dollars, followed bythe decision of the shareholders to sell the operations on eightEuropean markets, which they deemed less important and thesubsequent takeover thereof by investment fund CVC Capital Partnersin an over 1.5 billion-euro deal.
After the acquisition, CVC decided to change the names of thebranches taken over to StarBev, and began a process to recruit topmanagers in December. As a result, Mihai Albu got one of the mostimportant positions in the region, while Mihai Ghyka took over aschief executive officer of the Romanian branch of StarBev, thecompany that makes Bergenbier.
Albu and Ghyka had previously worked together at Bergenbier fora number of years, both them having an over twelve-year experiencein the beer industry working for the same company.
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