Carlos Brito

"What distinguishes you from an average company is the people you can attract, retain, develop, train, promote. Behind a brand that’s doing well in the market, you have people who understand consumers, have insights, execute according to those insights, and translate it. —Carlos Brito, CEO of AB InBev, Hire the Right People Speech"

"AmBev’s talent factory, spilling out droves of highly-talented executives at full speed, was able to expatriate more than one hundred executives of all seniority levels to international outposts of the newly-created company. Carlos Brito, AB InBev’s current CEO, was one of them: he left AmBev to run Labatt for some time, and to get some international mileage under his belt, a move agreed upon with the Belgians before he took over as InBev’s CEO in Leuven."

"Candor Transparency and free information flow ease decision-making and minimize conflicts. - Garantia’s 18 Commandments We believe common sense and simplicity are usually better guidelines than unnecessary sophistication and complexity. - AB InBev’s 10 Principles In big companies, only good news arrives at the top. - Carlos Brito, Endeavor CEO Summit"

"MBAs AB InBev and the other companies owned by the trio also hire top-tier MBAs. It all started with Carlos Brito, who was the first student to have his MBA financed by Jorge Paulo Lemann, in the 1980s. After his Stanford program ended, Brito was hired at Garantia, and went on to Brahma after the acquisition. Lemann and his two main partners then founded Fundação Estudar, a charity focused on handing out merit-based loans to promising graduate and undergraduate Brazilian students. Fundação Estudar gave the trio an unprecedented pipeline of high-quality postgraduate students (since then, the NGO has extended its program to undergrads), a great number of which were hired within the trio’s companies. MBAs from the world’s top business schools are selected for summer internships, and the top performers are then extended full-time offers, very much like what happens at Wall Street firms."

"Talented people like simplicity. That’s where they thrive. - Carlos Brito, 2012 Endeavor CEO Summit We also believe in keeping it simple: with decisions based on clear, agreed-upon approaches and common sense. That means constantly rooting out complexity, and streamlining processes that get in the way of decision-making and execution. - AB InBev’s 2014 Annual Report"

"Carlos Brito, in his “View from the Top” presentation at Stanford in 2011, “Great people are what forms great companies.” For a company to be great, the majority of its people have to be great: there is no magical ingredient to the equation."

"Especially during the transition toward an informal, candid meritocracy, those people Carlos Brito refers to as mediocre (a harsh but candid term) will be very displeased with the new way of doing things. Nice people who have worked for a company for a very long time will no longer feel safe and warm in their corners, and others won’t like the competitive environment, in which employees constantly challenge their peer’s views and assumptions. Again, it is always easier to kick the can down the road and maintain the status quo, but these changes are the foundation of a great company."