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Laurent Freixe (born 21 April 1962) is a French business executive and the CEO of Nestlé since 2024.
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. In 2008, Freixe was invited to take over as the head of Europe. Freixe helped grow the Nestlé coffee brand Nescafé Dolce Gusto to billions in annual revenue. As head of Europe, he developed his approach to management, which he refers to as a "virtuous circle." He focuses on cutting costs not to improve profit margins, but to invest in new products that grow revenue. In 2014, he was put in charge of the Americas at Nestlé.
On 1 September 2024, Freixe succeeded Ulf Mark Schneider as CEO of Nestlé. He reversed the restructuring efforts of the prior CEO, increased spending on advertising, and cut costs by a few hundred million euro per year. Freixe said he was going to reduce the company's pace of acquisitions. 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.
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