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Laurent Freixe
French business executive From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Laurent François Charles Freixe[1] (born 21 April 1962) is a French business executive and former chief executive of Nestlé from September 2024 to September 2025.
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Early life
Freixe was born in April 1962 and grew up in Paris. His parents were electrical engineers.[1] He earned an MBA with an emphasis in marketing from EDHEC Business School in Lille in 1985.[1] Freixe was a competitive handball player, winning a French championship when he was sixteen years old.[1]
Career
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Freixe started at Nestlé negotiating contracts with grocery stores.[1] He worked in market research, then as a brand manager for the Dairy and Nutrition division. He helped Nestlé beat competitor Captain Iglo in the fish sticks market with a new fish sticks brand he launched called Croustibat.[1] He also helped the struggling French snacks division rebound by making large cuts to the overstaffed division.[1]
At age 37, Freixe became the head of the Dairy and Nutrition Division for Nestlé France for three years, before moving to Hungary where he was the head of the Spanish and Portuguese markets for two years.[1] In 2008, Freixe was invited to take over as the head of Europe.[1] Freixe helped grow the Nestlé coffee brand Nescafé Dolce Gusto to billions in annual revenue.[1] As head of Europe, he developed his approach to management, which he refers to as a "virtuous circle."[1]
In 2014, he was put in charge of the Americas at Nestlé.[1]
On 1 September 2024, Freixe succeeded Ulf Mark Schneider as chief executive of Nestlé.[2][3] He reversed the planned restructure, increased spending on advertising and cut costs by a few hundred million euro per year.[1][3][4] Freixe refocused the company on core brands including Nescafé, KitKat and Fancy Feast, and promised to reinvest in areas with more-promising growth products, such as cold coffee.[5] Freixe also said he was going to reduce the company's pace of acquisitions.[6] He also restarted the company's 60/40 rule, whereby Nestlé only releases products where blind taste-testing experiments show at least 60 percent of consumers prefer it over competing products.[1]
On 1 September 2025, Nestlé announced the immediate dismissal of Freixe citing an undisclosed romantic relationship with an employee that violated the company's code of conduct.[7] The dismissal came following an investigation by the company's board.[7] Freixe did not receive any remuneration on exit and was replaced by Philipp Navratil.[8][9] Nestlé's share price dropped nearly 20% in the period Freixe was CEO—underperforming peers such as Unilever and Danone.[10]
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Personal life
Freixe is married to Agata Balcerowska, who is a senior executive at Publicis.[11]
References
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