Dr Hoepfner sacked from Brau Holding International
Dr Friedrich Georg Hoepfner, 59, who owned – and sold - Hoepfner Brewery to the Schörghuber-Heineken venture in Germany, only to join the buyers’ Brau Holding International as chief, was shown the door by Stefan Schörghuber – a move which took many by surprise, not least Mr Hoepfner himself.
Stefan Schörghuber, 46, Germany’s real estate-to-brewing mogul, who part-owns Germany’s third-largest brewing group (Paulaner, Kulmbacher) seems to suffer from bad Karma. In September, he was forced to resign as head of the Doemens board after his plans of relocating the prestigious brewing school to Krones headquarters fell through with Krones (we reported). And in October he had to sack Mr Hoepfner who had chaired his Brau Holding International (BHI) for less than two years following mounting pressure from his venture partner Heineken.
As no successor has been found yet, Mr Schörghuber and his finance man Hans Peter Hoh will join the board of BHI. Together with Hans P. van Zon, Heineken’s representative, the three will run the brewing group for the time being.
BHI, which reportedly produced 12 million hl of beverages and had a turnover of EUR 840 million during its past financial year, is owned by the Schörghuber Foundation (50.1 %) and Heineken (49.9 %). The venture, which has had its - rumoured – ups and downs, to which the frequent change of chiefs bears ample testimony, has been headed by Dr Hoepfner since April 2006. Mr Hoepfner followed Wolfgang Salewski, who used to be Mr Schörghuber’s principal advisor for many years. While Mr Salewski, a trained psychologist and security advisor to Germany’s anti-terrorist forces, had a reputation as a tough cost cutter, Mr Hoepfner was generally regarded as an aesthete. According to industry gossip, Mr Hoepfner used to run his family-owned 180,000 hl brewery by idiosyncratic paternalistic business principles before he sold it to BHI in 2004. As proof of his artistic leanings, Hoepfner’s work as a photographer can be bought over the Internet.
Although he was a strange choice, given his background, Mr Hoepfer was charged with integrating the various medium-sized breweries in the south of Germany that BHI had gobbled up over the years. Apparently, if you read between the lines of the press release announcing his departure, he did not proceed fast enough with the task.
Whether Mr Schörghuber will provide BHI with greater continuity, now that he is in the driver’s seat, remains to be seen. Should he fail to deliver the goods, it will only be a matter of time before he will be replaced by someone who has Heineken’s trust.
