Heineken N.V. today announced that Glenn Caton will succeed Soren Hagh as President Europe from 1 January 2024.
Caton joins Heineken from Mondelez International, where he is currently Senior Vice President Global Commerce and was previously President for South-East Asia and President of Northern Europe. Glenn will join the Executive Team reporting to Dolf van den Brink, Heineken’s CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board.
Heineken’s new President Europe embarked on his career at P&G, where he dedicated nine years of his professional journey. During this period, he held various positions in Sales and Marketing, primarily stationed in the UK and Geneva. Subsequently, in 2003, he transitioned into the wine sector, assuming the role of Senior Marketing Director for Europe at E&J Gallo.
In 2006, Caton made a pivotal move to Hiscox Insurance, where he began as the UK Sales & Marketing Director and later advanced to become the Managing Director of the UK Direct-to-Consumer business, based in London. After four years with Hiscox Insurance, he rekindled his passion for the wine industry by taking on the role of UK Managing Director at Direct Wines, renowned as the world's largest consumer wine business.
In 2013, Glenn's journey led him to Mondelez, where he served as the VP for Chocolate Northern Europe. In 2016, he assumed the role of President, Northern Europe, achieving substantial growth in both revenue and profitability. His career then took him to Singapore in 2018, initially as the Category President for Chocolate across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Later, he was appointed as the Business Unit President for South-East Asia, successfully guiding the business through the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dolf van den Brink, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, commented: “Glenn brings great experience of operating across different sectors, regions and cultures. He has driven growth and innovation and delivered consistently strong results leading businesses in FMCG, financial services, direct-to-consumer and retail. He is an entrepreneurial, highly commercial, and creative leader who has demonstrated a clear ability to build highly motivated teams that drive for results and deliver change. He will be a great addition to Heineken and our Executive Team, and I very much look forward to working with him.”
His predecessor Soren Hagh will leave Heineken on 31 December 2023 to take up a new role which will be announced shortly.
After having held several senior management positions at Lego, Diageo and L’Oréal, Hagh joined Heineken in 2013 as Heineken’s Executive Director Global Marketing. In 2016 he was appointed Managing Director of Heineken Italy. Four years later in March 2020, he was appointed as Regional President for Europe and member of the Executive Team.
Over the last 3.5 years, as part of the EverGreen strategy, he has led the fundamental transformation of our European business, focusing on improving profitability and value creation by winning in premium, digitally transforming our route-to-consumer, and leveraging our scale advantage. He has led an end-to-end transformation of the regional supply chain network to step change productivity, increase asset utilization, improve innovation rates and put us on the path to deliver our net-zero ambitions in the region. In parallel, his teams have focused on strengthening their premium portfolios and launching a next generation of premium brands that connect to Gen Y and Z.
Hagh has also led a bold transformation of Heineken’s route-to-market in Horeca by launching the Eazle platform across the region and building it into the industry leading eB2B platform in Europe.
Dolf van den Brink commented: “I would like to express my gratitude to Soren for his significant contributions to Heineken over the last ten years. Soren has driven our EverGreen transformation in Europe investing in our premium portfolio and driving innovation at scale, whilst also building a future-fit organization by leveraging our supply chain network and digitally transforming our route-to-consumer. He has been a valuable member of the Executive Team and I wish him every success in his future ventures.”
