The life of an FTSE 100 chief executive is a precarious one, often characterised by fleeting highs and crushing lows. Success is only ever transient, while investors are often impatient and unforgiving in times of trouble.
The departure of Diageo boss Debra Crew, therefore – after a two-year tenure which contained some bright moments but will mostly be recalled with disappointment – should come as no surprise.
So, where did it go wrong for the former US army captain, and where does the Guinness and Johnnie Walker maker go from here?
Crew’s mixed tenure
Crew took charge of Diageo in unfortunate circumstances – the untimely death of her predecessor Ivan Menezes meant her start date was brought forward by several weeks. Nevertheless, she seemingly inherited a business, on the face of it, in reasonably good health.
In the year ended 30 June 2023 sales and profits both grew by mid-to-high single-digits. Diageo’s three main growth pillars of scotch, tequila and Guinness were all up double-digits, and premium spirits remained “resilient”, Crew insisted at the time.
It didn’t take long for things to go pear-shaped, however. By October, Diageo had issued a shock profit warning, citing challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean, where shoppers were switching out from its scotch whiskies to cheaper alternatives.
“Macroeconomic pressures have worsened and that caused lower consumption and really more consumer downtrading than what the team was expecting,” Crew said at the time.
The warning caused Diageo shares to drop by more than 12%, with analysts questioning why the group had such poor stock visibility in the region.
Tricky first year
That episode set the tone for what was a tricky first year in charge for Crew, with Diageo reporting its first post-Covid net sales decline last summer. Revenues in the year ended 30 June 2024 fell 0.6% on an organic basis, slightly worse than analyst expectations of a 0.2% slide. Organic operating profit, meanwhile, declined by 4.8%.
Analysts continued to be unimpressed. “Diageo has gone from bad to worse… it can dress up the numbers all it wants, but it’s clear something major has to change,” AJ Bell’s Russ Mould wrote at the time. The share price fell to a seven-year low, which was the market’s way of saying it was “thoroughly unimpressed with the business”, he added.
Internally, concerns about Crew’s suitability for the top job began to surface. Whilst clearly a bright and extremely capable executive, sources described the former British American Tobacco boss as someone that was never entirely comfortable in social situations.
“She wasn’t especially good at PR or with the media. Quite often it was like pulling teeth,” one source said, adding Crew would jump at any opportunity to return to the US for work and was never entirely settled in London.
Diageo stuck by its CEO, but brought in Coca-Cola Europacific Partners CFO Nik Jhangiani in September. Jhangiani replaced the outgoing CFO Lavanya Chandrashekar and has impressed internally, leading to his appointment as interim CEO while Diageo seeks a permanent successor to Crew.
Tariff impact
Alongside many of its spirits peers, Diageo was plunged into further chaos in 2025, when newly elected President Donald Trump unveiled plans to slap tariffs on UK and EU imports into the all-important US market.
While the extent of duties that spirits are likely to face still remains unclear – Diageo may get off lighter than some of its peers on account of its scotch being produced in the UK and not on the continent – the move was enough to make the London-listed supplier scrap a long-held target of annual sales growth of between 5%-7%.
By May Diageo was in crisis-management mode, with shares down by 40% since Crew’s appointment. In a further sign of Jhangiani’s growing stature, he – not Crew – was the one to share details of a new $500m cost saving programme with investors, while also revealing Diageo was mulling major brand disposals to boost free cashflow.
Diageo succession plan
Eventually, it was decided a change of leadership was also required. “There is only so long a board and investors will wait for a CEO to stop the share price rot,” says Mould. Crew “had an incredibly difficult job to do” but had “run out of time”, he adds.
Her departure – which leaked to media shortly before official confirmation earlier today (16 July) – leaves Diageo in unusual territory. Having groomed Crew for the CEO role since her arrival in 2019, the board – led by chair John Manzoni – now needs to decide if Jhangiani is ready to step up, or whether an external candidate is required.
Analysts appear to be leaning towards the former. “We see some similarities between Diageo’s leadership change and Unilever’s recent CEO transition, with Hein Schumacher being replaced by CFO Fernando Fernandez in March,” Jefferies’ Ed Mundy wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.
Like Unilever, Diageo does not need a “strategic reset” to get back to its best, Mundy argues. The supplier has “pockets of excellence” including Guinness, but needs to get the balance between cost-cutting and “growth, investment, innovation and risk-taking” right, he notes.
Diageo is due to report full-year results on 5 August, at which point the extent of the reboot required will become clearer. But with Jhangiani having laid out a blueprint for how the business intends to move forward in May, wholesale changes in leadership would be a risk.
As to Crew – it’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for the former PepsiCo exec. Whilst there have clearly been mistakes made under her watch, Diageo is hardly alone in having a tough time adjusting to post-pandemic normalisation. Pernod Ricard, Moët Hennessy, Rémy Cointreau and Campari have all struggled in recent quarters, with the latter two also electing to switch CEOs in the past year. Menezes’ first two years in charge were also far from sparkling, and it could be argued Crew was handed a hospital pass in succeeding someone so beloved by everyone associated with Diageo.
The markets tell their own story, however, and the fact Diageo’s share price immediately surged on the news of Crew’s departure shows the decision was probably the correct one.

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