3G資本收購公司之後會怎麼做

To hear Jorge Paulo Lemann describe the corporate philosophy of private-equity group 3G Capital, you’d think he was talking about running a marathon: “You’re running, you’re always close to a limit, you’re working very hard and being evaluated all the time.” That’s what Lemann told Fortune in 2013 in a rare interview for a story about Anheuser-Busch InBev, the beer behemoth born out of a $52 billion buyout that 3G orchestrated in 2008.

如果乍聽到喬治o保羅o雷曼描述私募公司3G資本的經營哲學，你可能會以爲他談的是跑馬拉松，“你不停地跑，總是快要接近極限，你一直非常努力，而且你的表現會被人全程評估。”這是他在2013年一次難得的採訪中告訴《財富》的，那次報道的主題是合併誕生的啤酒巨頭安海斯-布希英博，2008年，3G資本精心促成了這一價值520億美元的併購案。

Now, 3G and Warren Buffett are teaming up on a mega-merger of Heinz and Kraft just seven months after they worked together on Burger King’s $11.4 billion takeover of Canadian chain Tim Hortons. One year before that, they bought ketchup-maker Heinz.

現在，3G資本又和沃倫o巴菲特合作，操刀了亨氏食品和卡夫食品的超大規模合併案。就在七個月前，他們纔剛剛一起參與了漢堡王對加拿大咖啡及甜甜圈連鎖商蒂姆霍頓斯的收購，交易價值114億美元。而再往前追溯一年，是他們一起收購了番茄醬製造商亨氏。

In the new deal, Heinz will buy 51% of Kraft. (When rumors of the move first broke, late Tuesday, they bumped Kraft shares up 16% in after-hours trading.) The new corporation, The Kraft Heinz Company, will have around $28 billion in annual revenue, and current Heinz CEO Bernardo Hees will remain chief executive.

在最新的這筆交易中，亨氏將收購卡夫51%的股權（相關傳聞首次爆出後，卡夫股價在盤後交易中上漲了16%）。合併後的卡夫亨氏公司年收入將達到約280億美元，亨氏現任首席執行官貝爾納多o赫斯將擔任新公司的CEO。

So, what can Kraft employees expect next? First: widespread layoffs, lower budgets, new levels of austerity, and a shift in the corporate culture. And then, for shareholders: profit.

那麼，卡夫的員工接下來會看到什麼呢？首先就是大範圍裁員、削減預算、進一步緊縮開支以及公司文化的轉變。然後，股東將收穫利潤。

When 3G led InBev’s hostile takeover of Anheuser-Busch, it quickly cut 1,400 jobs from the American company (75% of them in St. Louis) and brought in Brazilian executives from InBev — itself the result of a 2004 merger of Belgian beer maker Interbrew and Brazilian beer maker Ambev, which was the result of a 1999 merger between Brahma and Antarctica — to run things. They included Lemann protégé Carlos Brito as AB-InBev CEO, and former Ambev exec Luiz Edmond as zone president of North America (effectively CEO of Anheuser-Busch). Industry consultant Tom Pirko told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time that InBev’s top execs are “not known for their gentle demeanor.”

當3G資本牽頭完成英博對安海斯-布希的惡意收購後，它馬上裁掉了1400名安海斯-布希員工，並引進英博的巴西高管團隊入主安海斯-布希。英博本身就是由比利時啤酒公司Interbrew和巴西同行Ambev在2004年合併而成；Ambev則是前巴西啤酒製造商Brahma和Antarctica於1999年合併的產物。其高管包括出任安海斯-布希英博CEO的薄睿拓、任北美區總裁（相當於安海斯-布希CEO）的Ambev公司前高管路易斯o埃德蒙德。當時，接受《聖路易斯郵報》採訪的行業顧問湯姆o皮爾科稱，英博高層“並不以溫和派形象示人”。

AB-InBev quickly earned plaudits, and still does, for its lean operations and profitability. Brito brought to Anheuser-Busch the concept of “zero-based budgeting,” wherein every expense must be newly justified every year, not just new ones, and the goal is to bring it lower than the year prior. “They are a profit- and margin-generating machine,” Harry Schuhmacher, editor of trade publication Beer Business Daily, toldFortune for our 2013 profile on Brito. That reputation comes directly from the 3G handbook.

安海斯-布希英博的精益化運營和盈利能力迅速贏得了讚譽，至今仍好評不斷。薄睿拓向安海斯-布希灌輸了“從零開始制定預算”的概念。按照這樣的思路，每年都要重新審覈每一筆開支是否合理，而不僅僅是新增開支。這樣做的目的是讓預算逐年下降。2013年，《財富》雜誌撰寫薄睿拓的人物報道時，行業出版物《啤酒業日報》的編輯哈里o舒馬赫曾介紹說：“他們是創造利潤和提高利潤率的機器。” 這樣的名聲正是源於3G資本的行爲方式。

With Heinz, it was the same story. The CEO of 15 years, Bill Johnson, was replaced with 3G partner Bernardo Hees (pronounced “hess”). After his first speech to the 50 top executives, at a Heinz leadership conference in a San Francisco, Hees immediately summoned most of them, one by one, into a separate room to inform them of whether they still had a job. Eleven of the top 12 execs did not — they were swiftly replaced by younger talent from within Heinz or by outside executives who had worked at other 3G-owned companies. Within another month, Heinz announced it would cut 350 of the 1,200 full-time jobs at Pittsburgh headquarters, plus another 250 elsewhere in North America.

收購亨氏後的情況也如出一轍。作爲3G資本合夥人，貝爾納多o赫斯取代了在亨氏擔任了15年CEO的比爾o約翰遜。在舊金山召開的亨氏高層會議上，赫斯首次向該公司50名高管發表了講話。隨後，他立即在另一個房間跟大多數高管逐個見面，目的是告知後者是否遭到解僱。在12名最高層負責人中，有11人丟了工作，取而代之的是亨氏內部的年輕才俊以及來自3G資本旗下其他公司的高層。不到一個月後，亨氏宣佈，擁有1200名正式員工的匹茲堡總部將裁員350人，北美其他地區的業務也將裁掉250名員工。

At Tim Hortons, where the deal with 3G, Buffett and Burger King was finalized in December, 350 people lost their jobs in January. CBC News in Canada reported that the workers were “blindsided.”

3G資本和巴菲特在去年12月幫助漢堡王完成了對蒂姆霍頓斯的收購。今年1月份，350名蒂姆霍頓斯員工就被炒了魷魚。哥倫比亞廣播公司加拿大分部的報道說這些員工完全“措手不及”。

It’s all part of what analysts call “the 3G way.” That is not necessarily a Brazilian method, per se, according to Lemann. In fact, he told Fortune that the 3G style has been influenced mostly by American businesses: “We’re a copycat, really. That’s what we are. Most of the stuff we’ve learned has been from Jack Welch, Jim Collins, from GE, from Wal-Mart. We’ve sort of put it all together. Most of the people who are at the top of InBev are people who came from our trainee system, which was developed and worked at Ambev. So they’re at the top not because they are Brazilians, but because these are the people who we were training 20 years ago, and they’re the best-trained people available.”

以上種種就是分析師所說的“3G模式”。據雷曼介紹，這種行爲方式並非產自巴西。實際上，他對《財富》雜誌表示，在經營風格方面對3G資本影響最大的一直是美國公司。雷曼說：“我們只是照貓畫虎，真的。我們就是這樣。我們學到的東西大多來自傑克o韋爾奇、吉姆o柯林斯、通用電氣和沃爾瑪。我們基本上就是把這些融和到了一起。英博的大多數高層都來自我們的培訓系統，這個系統由Ambev建立，也爲Ambev所用。也就是說，他們身居要職並不是因爲他們是巴西人，而是因爲他們在20年前就接受了我們的培訓，而且是可供挑選的受訓者中表現最好的。”

Regardless, the 3G way has come to stand for: extreme transparency; merit-based pay; austere budgeting (“treat the company’s money as your own,” AB-InBev employees are constantly told); promoting young talent quickly; and a spirit of competitiveness. “We’re constantly trying to train new people and we’re constantly telling everybody that the newer people should be better than the old people,” said Lemann. “And you can only go up in the firm if you have picked people as good as yourself or better to be below you.”

不管怎樣，3G模式已經成了一種象徵，它代表着極高的透明度，基於考評的薪酬，嚴格的預算（安海斯-布希英博總是這樣告誡員工：“要像花自己的錢那樣使用公司的資金”），迅速提拔年輕人才以及競爭精神。雷曼說：“我們一直在想辦法培訓新人，也不停地告訴所有人，新員工應該超過老員工。只有選拔出和你一樣出色，甚至更出色的人來做你的下屬，你才能得到更好的提升。”

3G rewards loyalty, and AB-InBev’s Brito is a perfect example. He is a product of Lemann’s system. He first met Lemann in 1987 when he was working for Shell Oil and had been accepted to Stanford Business School. Lemann and his partners at the investment bank Banco Garantia ran a scholarship program, and they backed Brito. After finishing business school, Brito went straight to work with 3G partner Marcel Telles at Brahma, a Rio-based brewer that Lemann and his partners had bought. From there, it was a rung-by-rung rise: Brahma to Ambev to InBev to Anheuser-Busch InBev, which now also includes Grupo Modelo.

對忠誠的人3G資本會予以回報，出自雷曼的培訓系統的安海斯-布希英博的薄睿拓就是最好的例證。1987年，當時還在殼牌石油工作的薄睿拓第一次見到了雷曼，那時他剛收到斯坦福商學院的錄取通知。雷曼當時和他在投資銀行加蘭蒂亞銀行的合夥人管理着一個獎學金項目，爲薄睿拓求學提供了資金支持。從商學院畢業後，薄睿拓立即成爲3G資本合夥人馬塞爾o特萊斯的手下，在雷曼及其合夥人收購的里約啤酒公司Brahma工作。自此開始，從Brahma到Ambev，從Ambev到英博，再到今天的安海斯-布希英博，薄睿拓迎來了一次又一次升遷。現在，墨西哥啤酒公司莫德羅集團也成了安海斯-布希英博的一員。

“There will always be people who don’t like it, especially the ones who were just entitled to be there for historical reasons, the ones who were not performing,” said Luiz Edmond, who now holds a global role as AB-InBev’s chief sales officer, about the 3G culture. “Our processes, our systems, do not allow that. They do not allow you to hide in a nice room, stay for the whole day. No.”

路易斯o埃德蒙德現在是安海斯-布希英博的首席銷售官，負責全球事務。對於3G資本的文化，他說：“總會有人不喜歡它，特別是那些只是出於歷史原因才待在這裏的人，那些毫無建樹的人。我們的流程和我們的系統都不允許出現這種情況。它們不允許你躲在舒適的房間裏一待就是一整天。絕對不行。”

If that sounds like the work environment for you, the newly formed Kraft Heinz Company may soon be hiring. But first, it’ll likely be cutting.

如果這種工作環境聽起來很適合你，新成立的卡夫亨氏公司也許很快就會展開招聘了。不過在此之前，它會做的第一步可能是先裁員。