Recently, Anheuser-Busch announced it would be cutting some of its corporate and marketing staff as the company continues to struggle from the fallout of the Bud Light boycott. However, a former executive of Anheuser-Busch spoke out, suggesting the company’s CEO should’ve been included in the layoffs.
The American Tribune reported last week on the announcement from Anheuser-Busch that hundreds of domestic employees would be let go. A spokesperson for the Bud Light parent company stated the organization “will simplify and reduce layers within its organization.” However, the spokesperson noted that the layoffs would not impact any frontline workers such as warehouse workers, salespeople, etc.
The firings are reported to impact less than 2 percent of Anheuser-Busch’s total employees in the United States. Although the corporation employs roughly 19,000 employees nationwide, assuming 2 percent of the workforce is fired, this would equal approximately 380 employees.
Former Anheuser-Busch executive Anson Frericks sat down with Fox News’ ‘Varney & Co.’ where he voiced his opinions on the widespread layoffs. Frericks opined that instead of cutting hundreds of lower-ranking office staff, the company should go after someone more responsible for the high-level decision-making and direction of the corporation, the CEO.
“My feeling is they would’ve been set up for more success if they actually laid off one person, which is their CEO,” said Anson Frericks, former president of operations at Anheuser-Busch. “They said they’re trying to set this business up for future long-term success, but there’s no future at this company with the current CEO in place,” he continued. “The CEO is accountable for the results of the organization, and the results of the last four months have been terrible.”
Frericks pointed out that the executive leadership at Anheuser-Busch is primarily responsible for the disastrous consequences of the Dylan Mulvaney partnership and should be held accountable. It’s dubious to think that rank-and-file corporate employees should suffer from plummeting sales and the loss of billions in market value. “You still have sales down 30% on their top brands. Billions of dollars of shareholder value have been erased, and it’s all due to the decisions made by the top leaders of the company,” Frericks criticized,” Frericks stated.
The former executive continued to outline how a company leader has a strict fiduciary responsibility to the company and its true owners, the shareholders. Frericks slammed other “stakeholders” pushing woke activism and initiatives that contradict said responsibility.
“Every single CEO, they have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, not to these stakeholders in the organization that are pushing different agendas, activist agendas, political agendas,” Frericks said. “If you’re the CEO of a company, you’re the one who’s accountable for the results at the end of the day.”
Frericks also explained how wokeness within Anheuser-Busch was not necessarily new with the Dylan Mulvaney partnership. He stated that by the time he left the company, it was publishing two annual reports, one that discussed the objective financials and another which was a 100-plus page report on ESG initiatives. The former executive claimed the ESG report, which touched on topics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion, did not contribute to the company’s overall bottom line.
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