JBS Heir to Take Over as CEO of Meatpacking Dynasty

By Patrick Thomas

JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, named Wesley Batista Filho, the grandson of the company's founder, as its next chief executive.

Batista Filho, the 34-year-old leader of JBS's U.S. business, will take over the company at the start of 2027, the company said Monday. The U.S. business for JBS generates more than half of the meatpacker's roughly $80 billion in annual revenue. He had been in the role since 2023.

Batista Filho would succeed Gilberto Tomazoni, who has served as the company's CEO since 2018. Meat industry officials had long expected Batista Filho to eventually assume the top job that his father once held at JBS after spending over a decade moving through the company's ranks.

In recent years, Batista Filho has steered JBS, the top beef processor in the U.S. by volume, through a nationwide cattle shortage that has driven up beef prices to record levels and cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. The company's stock ticked down Monday.

The company has largely offset struggles in its beef business with stable profits elsewhere in its sprawling protein empire. JBS owns Pilgrim's Pride--the second-largest U.S. chicken company--and is the second-largest U.S. pork processor. It has massive beef operations in Brazil and Australia, and processes other proteins such as lamb and salmon. It employs about 280,000 people in more than 20 countries.

Born in Brazil, Batista Filho is the son of Wesley Batista, the former CEO of JBS and current board member. Batista Filho's grandfather was working as a butcher in the Brazilian countryside when he established the company in 1953.

Batista Filho spent the bulk of his life around the family business, getting his start by working the night shift at JBS's large beef plant in Greeley, Colo. In his early 20s, he ran slaughterhouses in South America and later led the company's Canadian business before taking over JBS's U.S. beef business in 2014.

"The good thing about an internal succession is that the incoming CEO doesn't have to come up with a new strategy," Batista Filho said in an interview. "You're not going to see big changes in direction."

Batista Filho takes over while the company is still losing money in its North American beef operations and is seeing pressure on chicken profits due to a poultry glut. But the company is looking to further grow its reach abroad.

The company recently brokered a deal with the Indonesian sovereign wealth fund Danantara Investment Management for a $2.5 billion investment in exchange for a 25% interest in a joint venture intended to expand JBS's operations in Australia and New Zealand.

Write to Patrick Thomas at patrick.thomas@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 10, 2026 16:07 ET (20:07 GMT)