A court in Singapore is preparing to decide who controls the Castel Group, a family-run French beverage business that has grown to be one of the largest drinks companies in Europe and Africa – and is currently the subject of a power struggle between two of the founder's relatives and the CEO, the first person outside the Castel family to run the multibillion-euro business.
The ruling will mark a major development in a dispute that became public late last year and centres on who will take over from the company's ageing founder – his family members or his chosen successor, an outsider.
The feud pits Romy Castel, the daughter of founder Pierre Castel, along with his nephew Alain Castel, against chief executive Gregory Clerc, a former tax lawyer appointed to the CEO role in 2023 who has the backing of the rest of the Castel family.
The two cousins accuse Clerc of attempting to seize control of the vast wine, beer and soft drinks empire, which generates annual sales of more than €6.5 billion and employs some 40,000 people worldwide.
On Friday, the High Court of Singapore – where Castel's core holding and asset management company Investment Beverage Business Management (IBBM) is based – will rule who controls IBBM.
Its decision will either reinstate Clerc, who was provisionally suspended pending the ruling, or allow the Castels to remove him permanently.
French wine, African beer
Founded as Castel Frères in Bordeaux in 1949, the business was born as a joint venture between Pierre Castel and his eight siblings, the children of Spanish immigrants who moved to France to work on vineyards.
From a wine merchant business, it later expanded into making, bottling, distributing and marketing wine. Today it owns the Baron de Lestac and Roche Mazet brands, among others, as well as the Nicolas chain of wine shops.
In parallel, Pierre Castel led an expansion into Africa. Beginning by exporting French wines, he established the company's first brewery in Gabon in the 1960s and then purchased or built more factories in other French-speaking African countries.
The company also bought out competitors in the beer and soft drinks industries, most recently taking an 80 percent stake in Guinness Ghana Breweries from Diageo at the beginning of last year.
Now its African operations make up more than three-quarters of its sales, thanks to widely sold brands including 33 Export, Flag and Castel Beer. Present in 22 countries on the continent, the group is the second-largest producer of beer and soft drinks in Africa and also owns sugar, flour and distillery assets.
Succession strife
Now aged 99 and living in Portugal, Pierre Castel no longer runs the company.
While few of his relatives have been involved in its day to day operations in recent years, Clerc helped him expand a multinational network of holding companies and trusts that minimised the group's tax burden.
When the founder retired in 2023, he opted to hand the company's core management to Clerc and chairman Pierre Baer rather than to members of his family.
The family continues to hold the group's capital, which is divided equally between Pierre's only child and the descendants of his siblings.
Romy Castel and Alain Castel, who heads the company's wine operations, have been seeking publicly to oust Clerc since late 2025, when Alain unsuccessfully demanded his resignation and was instead dismissed himself from another of the group's holding companies.
In February, the cousins orchestrated a shareholder vote to dismiss Clerc and Baer from IBBM, claiming they wanted to protect Pierre Castel's vision for the group.
Clerc, meanwhile, maintains that he is pursuing the founder's policy of separating management from ownership.
Since then, the wider management has stripped Romy Castel of her seats on the boards of various subsidiaries after she publicly criticised certain business decisions.
In August, the four other majority branches of the Castel family also released a joint statement distancing themselves from her and backing Clerc's management team.
However, last week she secured a strategic victory when the Singapore court allowed her faction to put forward three new proposed directors to fill empty board seats.
The court will deliver its definitive ruling on Clerc's dismissal on Friday.
Romy Castel has also filed criminal complaints against Clerc in France, Switzerland and Luxembourg, accusing him of betrayal of interest and misappropriation of company assets and other offences during his time as her personal tax lawyer and as CEO.
Clerc in turn has lodged a case against Romy Castel for allegedly forging her father's signature on a power of attorney, which she denies.
