Diageo CEO Dave Lewis has said he will not be detailing the number of jobs cut in his global restructure plans, adding that the figure is impossible to pull from publicly available information.
Lewis, who earlier today announced plans to save US$1bn over the next three years under a “significant” restructuring initiative, said job cuts had been necessary, but “not easy”. Speaking to reporters in a media call earlier today, he maintained that “nobody’s saying to me this is the wrong thing to do”.
In its fiscal 2026, Diageo reported severance costs of US$514m, just over a sevenfold-increase on the group’s US$73m expenditure in 2025.
“I don’t want to talk about a number. I don’t think that’s the right way for me to be talking about colleagues that were impacted by this change,” Lewis said. “You’ve seen the total cost of the operating framework changes. There are some people things in there, some non-people things in there. So you’re not going to be able to break it out.”
He added: “People have been very clear that things needed to change. If you were to see the last five years of internal feedback, people talk about a very large amount of duplication, a lack of accountability for decision making … So actually, we’re addressing some of the issues that the Diageo team have been saying we’ve got to do.
“Now, look, the consequences of that are not great for anybody, so it’s not easy. But I think if you ask Diageo colleagues ‘did we need to change?’, I think pretty much every one of them would have said, ‘yeah, we need to change’. And whilst … the impacts are big, nobody’s saying to me this is the wrong thing to do.”
Redundancy rumours have been swirling since the former Tesco CEO took over the top post at the spirits major in January.
Earlier this week, a Scottish trade union claimed Diageo had placed 172 scotch-whisky distillery staff at risk of redundancy, with 38 jobs set to be cut as part of the restructuring programme. GMB Scotland claimed Diageo had been “steam-rolling” through job cuts.
There have already been several top-level personnel changes at The Johnnie Walker & Don Julio brand owner this year – including the hire of Procter & Gamble veteran Sujay Wasan as president of its ‘Asia-Pacific’ (APAC) business.
