NEWSMAKER-InBev's CEO Brito takes global stage with Bud bid

By Elzio Barreto

SAO PAULO, July 13 (Reuters) - When Carlos Brito started working at Brazilian brewer Brahma in 1989 the company looked to Anheuser-Busch Cos for inspiration for its marketing strategy and sales techniques.

As chief executive of Belgian-Brazilian brewer InBev NV INTB.BR, Brito has come full circle, making a $50 billion sweetened offer for the maker of Budweiser and Michelob that the Anheuser board may find hard to turn down.

Brito's management style has been called aggressive by union leaders from Brazil to Belgium, his targets for sales demanding and uncompromising, the cost-cuts he implemented were brutal.

He started in the beverage industry in the finance department at Brahma, which had been taken over by investment banker Jorge Paulo Lemann and his Garantia partners Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira. The three bankers are now the largest individual shareholders of InBev after they sold AmBev (AMBV4.SA)(ABV.N) to Interbrew in 2004.

The investment banking culture of performance-based rewards and intense competition among employees lives on until this day and has helped InBev double its profit since Brito took the helm of the company in December 2005.

"I liken them (Brito and his management team) to machete-wielding investment bankers," said Ann Gilpin, an analyst at research firm Morningstar.

Brito, 48, had a meteoric rise at Brahma, heading the company's soft-drink business, sales department and becoming chief operating officer before taking the top post at AmBev in 2004. His close ties to Lemann, who funded Brito's MBA at Stanford's business school, and the fact he was an overachiever helped propel Brito all the way to the CEO position at InBev.

"Brito has always been a very focused person, he's not one to beat around the bush," said Alberto Cerqueira Lima, a former marketing director at Brahma and AmBev who now heads marketing consultant Copernicus in Brazil.