A View from the Top: AB InBev's UK & Ireland president

Jason Warner on beer, the World Cup and where he gets his drive

Warner previously worked at Nestlé and Coca-Cola

Forget who wins the World Cup, the more thrilling action being played this summer is off the pitch, and between the world’s biggest brewers. On one side is Anheuser-Busch – known as AB InBev – the world’s biggest beer maker, whose Budweiser beer is the official tipple for the England team in the forthcoming FIFA World Cup.

On the other side is Heineken, the Dutch brewer, which ranks second in the world league table but is still the UK’s biggest brewer, and now the third-largest publican, after buying 2,950 pubs from Punch Taverns.

That’s not stopping Jason Warner, president of AB InBev in the UK and Ireland, from wanting to overtake Heineken to become the UK’s biggest brewer.

Surely that’s an open goal, I ask him? Stella Artois is already the nation’s favourite beer, while Bud will be drunk by millions of fans all over the country. You might feel tipsy at the prospect but 150 million pints of Bud are likely to be downed in the UK during the tournament. Fans can also expect the unexpected – Budweiser being given out free to people in pubs.

Replacing Carlsberg with Budweiser after 22 years was the biggest deal in the Football Association’s history – Warner won’t say how much – and Bud will be on tap at Wembley Stadium as part of the FA sponsorship, which includes investing even more at a grassroots level.

Which team does he think will win? Warner says quickly, with a big laugh: “Why England, of course.” But then adds that if he were to bet, his hard money would be on Belgium to win. It’s a diplomatic answer – one that is loyal to his British roots but also his corporate masters.

Anheuser-Busch InBev – to give the Belgian-Brazilian transnational its full moniker – has its global HQ in Leuven, the small Belgian town where Stella Artois was born in 1366. It’s also where the original Den Hoorn brewery was founded.

It’s been a year since Anheuser merged with SABMiller in one of the monster corporate mergers of all time, with 500 brands selling in 100 countries around the world. Warner says putting the two brewers together is going smoothly, and that such a giant global corporation works because of the way power is delegated to “zone presidents”. It’s doing well financially too: revenues shot up to $56.4bn (£41.8bn) last year and net income was $8bn. Now valued at €141bn (£124bn), it’s listed on the Euronext Brussels market with secondary listings on the Mexico, Johannesburg and New York exchanges.

We meet in a bar above King’s Cross, where Warner has travelled in from his Luton HQ. A big bear of a man, the 45-year-old is dressed down in open-necked shirt and jeans. “It’s that sort of culture, quite different from when I started at Nestlé, when we all wore suits. At Coca-Cola, it was chinos.”

He relishes giving every detail of how the Anheuser brewery started life in St Louis, Missouri, after a German wholesaler, Adolphus Busch, emigrated to St Louis in 1857, where he met a fellow German, Eberhard Anheuser, and married his daughter, thus starting an extraordinary brewing dynasty. Anheuser, who had made his money from soap, rescued a small brewery from bankruptcy, and brought in his son-in-law in as a salesman who went on to be a brewing pioneer, introducing the first pasteurisation techniques and refrigeration to the industry. “The St Louis brewery they created is still there, and so are the original German mosaics. Our brewmaster, Pete Kraemer, is fifth generation. Now that’s a legacy.”

There’s another legacy that Warner says AB InBev takes deeply seriously. Promoting responsible drinking with its low-alcohol beers, but also by helping bring water to the 700m or so people in the world who do not have access to clean supplies. Using the Stella Artois brand, AB InBev works with Matt Damon and his water.org charity and has, over the last few months, brought clean water to more than a million people in the developing world.

Warner was headhunted into AB InBev’s New York office in 2009 from Coca-Cola, where he held a number of marketing and innovation roles, to look after the big brands such as Budweiser and Corona. He worked on sending Bud into space, part of building Budweiser’s brand image, which is one of “freedom and optimism” he says. Corona, by contrast, is all about sunshine.

You see, beers have personality too – it’s not just wines that get fancy personalities.

Two years ago he came back to the UK’s HQ in Luton, bringing an American wife with him and their young daughter. He’s in charge of 1,100 people working at the two breweries in Magor, South Wales, and Samlesbury, near Preston, and the more recently acquired Camden Town Brewery, with two sites in Camden and Enfield.

Since Warner’s arrival, the UK’s AB InBev beers have shown double-digit growth after several years of a stagnant, if not declining, overall beer market. His push to market low-alcohol beers such as Bud Light and no-alcohol options such as King of Beers and Budweiser Prohibition in the UK, as well as craft beers, have helped.

When he says craft, I mishear the word as “crap” so he repeats himself, suggesting that his recently acquired transatlantic twang is to blame. But the message is clear – craft beers are going like a train, and Camden Town’s beers are a “jewel”.

Warner supports the government’s decision to give subsidies to craft beers to encourage new entrants but he would also like to see lower duties on beer sales. “The Germans pay the equivalent to 4p tax on their pint.” Say no more.

After beating Heineken, Warner has another goal: to be on the board of the parent company. It’s not often you hear such honesty from an executive, nor the reason for his drive.

"My sister died when she was 19 after suffering from leukaemia, and in the final stages had two weeks to live. She arranged her own funeral. Her death changed my life, made me ambitious to live life to the full. ”

At the time, he was a not particularly hard-working engineering student at De Montfort University. But after her death, he threw himself into his studies,working like a fury. Even he was surprised after winning a place on the coveted Nestle graduate scheme, where he felt like the 'runt of the litter' but soared up the ranks, becoming an account director and brand manager within years. “Her death pushed me to shoot for the moon. And if you don’t make the moon, you will land in the stars.”