Guinness Nigeria has announced the appointment of Mr. Adebayo Alli as its new Managing Director. He is the first Nigerian-born CEO since 2015. The announcement was made after the company’s board meeting held last Monday.
According to Guinness Nigeria, the appointment by the Board follows the imminent move of Mr. John Musunga, the current MD/CEO into another exciting role within Diageo as the first Managing Director for Southern, West and Central Africa (SWC). John will remain in the role as MD/CEO of Guinness Nigeria till the end of 2023 to ensure a smooth handover to Bayo to further a smooth leadership change and succession planning strategy of the business.
The Board thanked Mr. Musunga for his impactful time as the MD of the company. In his time as MD, the business delivered a stellar performance under difficult conditions and reshaped its strategy while also achieving high employee engagement. The board wishes him all the best in his new role.
Adeboye Alli (Bayo) is a well-rounded executive with two decades of broad experience and leadership across supply chain, manufacturing, program management and sales. He has a proven track record of transforming business units, optimising end supply chains, leading commercial organisations to breakthroughs and delivering results through a diverse and inclusive team in complex, uncertain and disruptive environments.
In his current role as the Commercial Director, Bayo has led the delivery of outstanding NSV growth, doubled Gross Profits, unlocked significant improvement in gross margins grown or held value share across priority categories and partnered with Guinness Nigeria’s distributors to deliver mutually profitable growth despite significant headwinds.
He joined Diageo in 2005 as a Packaging Operation Support Manager and has worked in several senior leadership roles across manufacturing, supply and commercial.
In 2013 Bayo moved to Ethiopia on International Assignment to join Diageo’s Meta Abo Breweries Limited’s leadership team as the lead for a business transformation project. He was subsequently promoted to Plant Manager in 2014 and appointed Supply Chain Director in 2015. Bayo brought a unique style of leadership displaying a heightened sense of cultural awareness, inclusive leadership and a mission mindset to unlock many breakthroughs while working in Ethiopia.
He returned to Nigeria as Operations Director and in pursuit of his general management ambition, he transitioned to commercial taking up several senior commercial sales roles in the company.
Between 2019 and 2020, Bayo was appointed and served briefly as the Director for IPS, Reserve & Modern Trade. In 2020, Bayo was appointed as the Commercial Director of Guinness Nigeria.
Bayo also transformed the commercial team in Guinness Nigeria into one with a digital-focused mindset and has successfully leveraged technological solutions to drive incremental growth, deliver productivity, embed operational safety and sustain market share growth.
He is known for his deliberate focus on people and his many bold vets across supply and commercial have helped unlock business growth for many of his colleagues thereby ensuring robust succession plans. His purpose is to add value to the world by inspiring others especially Africans to cause the transformations he wants to see and leave everything better than he met it.
Bayo holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ibadan and an MSc in Advanced Process Engineering from Loughborough University, United Kingdom.
