There is a thin line that separates private life from work. In the largest food multinational in the world, this thin line has caused a short circuit. Nestlé has announced the immediate dismissal of his CEO, Laurent Freixe, following an internal investigation on an unsigned sentimental relationship with an employee. The woman, according to what has been leaked, was a direct subordinate of the manager, but it is not known if she was also removed.
Laurent Freixe is no longer CEO of Nestlé
Freixe, 63 years old, French citizen, had entered Nestlé back in 1986, building the entire career within the group. In office since September 2024, he had taken the place of the German Mark Schneider, a choice that had surprised for rapidity in a reality like that of Vevey, where the deliveries are usually weighted.
The board of the board is based on the idea that Freixe’s behavior has broken the internal conduct code, putting at risk the confidence of employees and the public credibility of the company. In the words of the board, the point is not the personal sphere, but the transparency and integrity that demand to those levels of responsibility.
In office for just one year, the task of relaunching the trust of investors and put Nestlé on a stable growth path had been entrusted to Freixe.
However, his brief conduction was not up to expectations: in the first half of 2025 organic growth stopped at 2.9%, while the total sales dropped by 0.2%. So there was also a performance problem at the base. Yet the Nestlé action has been the best since the beginning of the year within the Swiss Market Index.
In his place he was appointed Philipp Navratil, a Swiss manager with a long internal experience and responsible until yesterday of the Nespresso brand. The replacement aims to immediately stability to the group, engaged for years between raw materials and competitive pressure in emerging markets.
The Nestlé title, listed in Zurich, reacted with a slight flexion to the news, reflecting the short -term fears related to the change of summit. Navratil has been considered by analysts a reliable profile, raised in Nestlé since 2000 and with a career that has seen him guided the development of key brands.
His first words, reported by Reutersconfirm a continuous setting: “Our mission does not change, we will continue to invest in innovation and sustainability to guarantee growth and value for shareholders and consumers”.
The previous ones: when the private individual becomes a corporate problem
The Freixe case adds to an increasingly recurrent vein: the line between private life and public role of managers is thin and can quickly break. Immediately the mind takes us back to the case of Andy Byron, managing director of the Astronomer technological platform, he left his place after being resumed during a Coldplay concert in intimate attitudes with the Head of Human Resources, Kristin Cabot. Also in that case, the question did not concern the work itself, but the reputational impact generated by the viral diffusion of the images.
