Heineken loses Managing Director

Here today, gone tomorrow. After merely 18 months on the job, Heineken’s Managing Director in Switzerland, Roger Basler, 48, has left the brewer to join the Swiss manufacturer of kitchen and bathroom appliances, Franke, in October 2013. Mr Basler’s departure was announced on 27 August 2013.

While Heineken runs two breweries in Switzerland and employs about 900 people, the Franke Group is a CHF 3 billion (USD 3.2 billion) turnover company with 8,000 employees in 40 countries. Mr Basler is to become the new head of the Washroom Systems division.

Before Heineken, Mr Basler worked for Red Bull in Switzerland and Dyson, the manufacturer of vacuum cleaners.

As with all small countries, due to a dearth of home-grown top-notch managers, executives tend to job-hop more than elsewhere. But perhaps Mr Basler’s tenure was brief due to other reasons, as some market observers commented.

In Switzerland, Heineken ranks second (26 percent market share) behind Carlsberg’s Feldschlösschen (48 percent) and has been under pressure to fill capacities after losing perhaps 200,000 hl in private label production for the retailer Coop two years ago.

Also, because of Switzerland’s high retail prices for beer, many wholesalers have started to bring in parallel imports of major international brands. What is more, plenty of consumers have taken to stocking up on cheap beers in neighbouring Germany.

Domestic beer production has been hovering around the 3.5 million hl mark since 2006. Beer imports, mainly from Germany, stood at about one million hl in 2012.

Mr Basler’s successor is Stefano Borghi. Before joining Heineken Italia in 2006, he worked for Nestlé.