Who Runs the Castel Empire? A Fund, Two Trustees and a Hired CEO

Pierre Castel, now 99, founded his business in Bordeaux in 1949. Today the Castel group runs breweries in Africa, French wine brands and a sugar business, Somdiaa. It reported 2025 revenue of €6.954 billion and employs more than 40,000 people.

On 2 October 2026, his daughter Romy Castel announced that Singapore’s High Court had upheld her votes to remove the group’s chief executive, Grégory Clerc, and Pierre Baer from the board of a Singapore company, Investment Beverage Business Management (IBBM). The same day, the group’s top holding companies said Clerc remains chief executive. Both statements can be true at once, because of how the structure is built. (For the building blocks, see Holding Structures in Plain English.)

The chain, from top to bottom

A July 2026 judgment of the Singapore High Court describes the chain:

1. Family trusts. Zedra Trust Company (Singapore) holds all the units of the fund, as trustee for trusts that benefit the five branches of the Castel family. This is where the economic value ends up.
2. The fund. The Investment Beverage Business Fund is a Singapore private unit trust with assets of about S$8 billion, according to the court.
3. The fund’s trustee. SG Trust (Asia), part of Société Générale’s private bank in Singapore, is the fund’s professional trustee. It takes instructions from the fund manager, subject to a condition in the trust deed.
4. The fund manager. IBBM, licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), manages the fund.
5. The top holding. Cassiopée Pte Ltd, wholly owned by the fund, is the group’s ultimate holding company.
6. The group. Cassiopée owns all of DF Holdings, the main operating arm, which owns the breweries, wineries and sugar estates.

In plain words, a unit trust is a fund set up as a trust. The trustee holds the assets, the manager gives the instructions, and the unitholders get the value. None of the three sits with the man who runs the group.

Who holds which lever

• Shares of the fund manager. Pierre Castel gave IBBM shares to several people. According to the judgment, Romy Castel, his only daughter, holds 24.33%; Gilles Martignac and Guy De Clercq hold 24% each; Michel Palu holds 24.33%; and Pierre Baer, IBBM’s chief executive, holds 3.33%. Romy Castel, Martignac and De Clercq together hold 72.33%, enough to change IBBM’s board.
• The trustee. As holder of the fund’s assets, the trustee acts as Cassiopée’s shareholder and appoints its directors. The judgment records that on 7 January 2026, De Clercq was removed as a Cassiopée director by a shareholder’s resolution of the trustee. He says Clerc was behind it; the court made no finding on that.
• The chief executive. Clerc runs the group day to day, backed by the holding companies’ boards. A former Swiss tax lawyer who became an adviser to the founder, he became in 2023 the first chief executive from outside the family, according to Vino Joy News.

What the court decided, and what is not yet known

At an IBBM shareholders’ meeting on 2 February 2026, Romy Castel’s side proposed removing Baer and Clerc as directors. Baer, chairing, refused to recognise her voting rights, relying on an agreement under which she received the shares from her father. She argues that she also holds a general power of attorney from him. Her side declared the resolutions passed; IBBM said the board was unchanged.

On 9 February, the court barred Clerc and Baer from acting as IBBM directors while the case continues. On 30 July, it refused to lift that order, noting that “a shareholder’s right to vote is a proprietary right that goes with share ownership.” It did not decide the merits.

On 2 October, Romy Castel’s camp announced that the court had upheld the 2 February resolutions and her votes, and that new directors, including her, would join IBBM’s board, subject to MAS approval, according to EcoMatin and Paperjam. The full text of that decision had not been published as of 7 October, Business in Cameroon reported, according to Billionaires.Africa. Accounts also differ: Lepetitjournal, writing on 6 October, described a 25 September ruling and said the court still had to rule on her voting rights. Until the text is public, its exact scope is unclear.

Why the CEO stays

The boards of Cassiopée and DF Holdings say IBBM “is not the parent company of the Castel Group” and that the board changes do not transfer control. They reaffirmed their “full confidence” in Clerc. Their argument follows the chain: IBBM gives instructions to the fund, but the trustee owns Cassiopée and appoints its directors.

The holding companies also say the fund’s trustees began months ago to look for an independent, professional manager to replace IBBM, and have chosen one. This comes from their statement, as reported by EcoMatin and Paperjam; no candidate has been named. Romy Castel has asked the Singapore courts to suspend that process.

Romy Castel says Clerc gathered too much power and shut family members out of key decisions. His supporters say he is carrying out the founder’s wish to separate ownership from management. The holding companies note that she represents one of five family branches; two relatives, Philippe and Alain Castel, back her.

A fair caveat

We have not seen the October decision; its content comes from the two sides and press reports. The trust deed, which sets how far the trustee must follow IBBM, is not public. Further hearings could change the picture. Each side disputes the other’s account, and no court has found wrongdoing by anyone.

Five lessons to take away

1. Value, instructions and legal title can sit in different hands. Unitholders, manager and trustee each hold one piece.
2. Shares of a manager are not shares of the group. Winning IBBM’s board does not by itself change who runs the business.
3. The trust deed’s small print decides big questions. One condition on the trustee’s duty now matters a great deal.
4. Gifts of control need clear paperwork. The dispute turns on the documents under which shares were given.
5. A hired chief executive needs a mandate the whole family accepts. Separating ownership from management works only if the owners agree on it.

Questions to bring to your advisors

In our structure, who can replace the manager, the trustee and the chief executive, and on whose instruction? Are the voting rights on any gifted shares clear in every document? What does our trust deed say if the manager and the family disagree? These are questions to bring to your advisors, not advice.