With laughter and humor, Karel Vuursteen also managed to win over Freddy Heineken

It is the late eighties when Karel Vuursteen’s telephone rings. He has been employed by Philips for twenty years. Freddy Heineken on the line. “Karel, are you already thinking about beer?” asks the brewer. “No, but now we do,” laughs Vuursteen.

Heineken was tipped off by his network about his conversation partner. That could well be someone for the beer manufacturer. It is the first meeting of two men who at first glance have little in common. Heineken is a short, round man who mumbles; Flint, a tall guy with a voice that bridges a considerable distance.

But when they have dinner together after the telephone conversation, they appear to have the same sense of humor. Moreover, they are both chain smokers. When Heineken boasts during the dinner that he gets more attention from the women present, Vuursteen retorts: “Oh man, that’s because you’re bursting with money.”

After several meetings, Heineken is convinced that Vuursteen should become his successor. It will be the crowning achievement of his long career in Dutch business: from 1993 to 2002, Vuursteen was CEO of Heineken. He died last Monday at the age of 83.

I’m not impressed

It was a surprise to many that Vuursteen would lead Heineken. Unlike current CEO Dolf van den Brink and his predecessor Jean-François van Boxmeer, who made a career within the company, he came from outside.

Karel Vuursteen (Arnhem, 1941) studied development economics in Wageningen. Soon after, he joined Philips, where he worked for 23 years and rose to head of the American lighting division.

When Heineken approaches him, Vuursteen is already approaching fifty. He would like to lead another large company, but that won’t work at Philips. Jan Timmer took over as CEO in 1990 and clashed with Vuursteen. Timmer is an authoritarian leader, Vuursteen someone who does not simply allow the law to be dictated to him, as journalist Stefan Vermeulen outlines in his book Heineken after Freddy.

Vuursteen is interested in a top position at the beer brewer, but would like to discuss salary and signing bonus. During a meeting, Heineken writes down some figures on a piece of paper: “And what do you think about this?” Flint laughs. “Well Freddy, I’m not impressed.” Heineken: “That is not the question, do you do it or not?”

Vuursteen eventually agreed and became a member of the board of directors. Heineken would have liked to immediately appoint him as replacement for incumbent CEO Gerard van Schaik, but the supervisory board is preventing this. It still happened in 1993.

Having tea at Heineken

Heineken’s international expansion is taking shape under Vuursteen. The brewer is large in the Netherlands and also exports, but hardly has any foreign brands. This is changing under Vuursteen, with varying degrees of success. In 1996, Heineken acquired the French Fischer (including Desperados) and in 2000 the large Spanish Cruzcampo. However, several takeover attempts fail. There was even an oral agreement with the Canadian Labatt in 1996. But Freddy Heineken himself is standing in the way of a transaction: he does not believe in growth through acquisitions outside Europe. With his majority stake in Heineken Holding, he has the final say.

Flint is aware of this. He knows that he always needs permission from the actual boss to carry out his plans. That’s why Vuursteen goes to Freddy for tea every week, to catch up and make plans for the week. He managed to make a few more acquisitions, especially at the end of his career at Heineken. After Freddy passed away in early 2002, an even stronger foreign expansion followed.

Appeasing shareholders

Vuursteen opposes Heineken’s focus on “incongruous shareholder value”. He often clashes with investors who mainly focus on value growth of their shares. Against weekly Elsevier says Vuursteen: “What is a company all about? It’s about long-term positions, market shares, making consumers happy. With the pressure of the quarterly figures, the signs with the current stock prices that you saw hanging everywhere in companies, you drive an organization crazy, completely crazy.” American investors also got a boost: “I run a company, I don’t manage the stock exchange.”

Because of his steadfast leadership, Vuursteen was named CEO of the year 2001 by the Managers Network Netherlands. The following year he resigns; his family wants him to take it easy. He becomes a supervisory director at the beer brewer.

A few years later there was a stain on his reputation. The brewer appears to have made price agreements with several competitors between 1996 and 1999, from which they earned approximately 400 million euros. The participants in the beer cartel are fined 273 million euros. Individual directors are not penalized. TV program research Zembla shows that Vuursteen was closely involved in the conversations. He found it “shocking” to be portrayed “as a criminal”.

Supercommissioner

It does not prevent companies from offering him supervisory positions. For example, Vuursteen becomes chairman of the supervisory board at listed companies such as Randstad and Ahold. He is confronted with an accounting scandal at that retail group. What Vuursteen opposed at Heineken has happened at Ahold. Ahold has grown too fast to appease investors; figures appear to be artificially inflated. “I couldn’t do anything about it, because I was just sitting there, but it was dramatic,” said Vuursteen. “I admitted mistakes, but I really couldn’t explain certain events. There was no explanation for that.”

Due to kidney problems, Vuursteen was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the supervisory boards at Ahold and Randstad in 2004. He does serve his terms as a supervisory director at AkzoNobel, ING, TomTom and Gucci – “Glamour, fashion shows, beautiful girls. That was fun.”

When he is in his early 70s, Vuursteen stops. It took “a terrible time to get used to it,” he said in 2014 NRC. “It’s no fun at all to do nothing when you’ve had such an active life.” He misses the regularity: “I don’t feel like playing golf every day. There they are only interested in what your tee shot was on the seventh hole. Well, I don’t think that’s a topic of conversation.”

Not that Vuursteen doesn’t do anything anymore. He remains active for the Concertgebouw Fund and the Grachtenfestival. He got the energy for this after a kidney transplant in 2010. “Things have been going really well since then. I have been given ten more years,” he said to NRC in 2014 with his characteristic booming laugh. There are now fourteen.

Karel Vuursteen was Commander in the Order of Orange-Nassau. He leaves behind a wife, two daughters and a son.

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