Mihai Albu is back in beer business

Mihai Albu, one of the best-known Romanian executives in the beer industry has been appointed regional chairman of StarBev producer (the brand that will group the beer operations taken over by investment fund CVC Capital Partners from AB InBev i.e.), which has 2,500 employees and posted 470 million-euro turnover in 2008.

Albu, 47, is thus back in the beer business almost one year after leaving the ABInBev (ABI) group, at which time he decided to take 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 of Directors and took over the position of regional chairman, from which I supervise five countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, as well as the export operations of the entire StarBev group,” Albu told ZF.

StarBev is based in Prague, a city where Mihai Albu had lived before, back when he was running the regional operations of Belgian brewer InBev. InBev has gone through a number of important changes over the last three years starting from the takeover of the US-based Anhseuser-Busch group for 52 billion dollars, followed by the decision of the shareholders to sell the operations on eight European markets, which they deemed less important and the subsequent takeover thereof by investment fund CVC Capital Partners in an over 1.5 billion-euro deal.

After the acquisition, CVC decided to change the names of the branches taken over to StarBev, and began a process to recruit top managers in December. As a result, Mihai Albu got one of the most important positions in the region, while Mihai Ghyka took over as chief executive officer of the Romanian branch of StarBev, the company that makes Bergenbier.

Albu and Ghyka had previously worked together at Bergenbier for a number of years, both them having an over twelve-year experience in the beer industry working for the same company.