Coffee-focused conglomerate JAB has named managing partner Joachim Creus as its new CEO.
Creus will succeed Olivier Goudet, who is staying with the company as a personal investor and advisor. JAB — the Luxembourg umbrella organization comprised of investment firms JAB Holding Company and Jab Consumer Partners — was founded by members of the German billionaire Reimann family.
The company also announced that Frank Engelen has been promoted to managing partner, effective immediately.
In addition to retaining significant holdings in the cosmetics, luxury goods and pet insurance industries, JAB has become one of the world’s largest coffee conglomerates since Goudet took over as CEO in 2012.
JAB is currently the largest shareholder in Keurig Dr Pepper, which recently invested $300 million in to La Colombe. The investment firm is also the largest shareholder in JDE Peet’s, whose subsidiaries include Peet’s Coffee, Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Intelligentsia Coffee.
In what JAB described as a generational change for the investment company’s leadership, new CEO Creus has also been designated as the successor to Peter Harf as the chairman of the JAB board of directors.
Creus has been with JAB for more than 13 years, working alongside Harf and Goudet through numerous acquisitions and investments.
“Continuity of leadership is paramount at a firm like JAB, and the appointment of Joachim to CEO is a testament to our strong faith in his vision,” Harf said in an announcement from JAB Holding Company. “Over the last decade, not only has Joachim been instrumental to building an enduring investment firm, he has also become a member of the extended Reimann family.”
Harf has previously stated that JAB founder Albert Reimann Sr. and his son Albert Reimann Jr. “belonged in jail” due to their associations with the Nazi party and use of forced labor in the 1930s and 1940s. Younger generations of the Reimann family have reckoned with the company’s past, and in 2019 they pledged at least $5 million for an organization supporting Holocaust survivors.
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