Brazil & Southern Cone - September 2026

Nearly a decade after Wesley and Joesley Batista were forced to resign from their leadership positions at JBS, a member of the founding family is returning to the helm of the world’s largest meatpacking and processing company. Wesley Batista Filho, the son of Wesley Batista and the grandson of JBS founder José Batista Sobrinho, will replace Gilberto Tomazoni as global CEO starting in January 2027, the company said in a filing to regulators in August.

The incoming CEO brushed off any concerns about disruption or change, suggesting it would be business as usual at JBS. “This is a transition defined by continuity,” Batista Filho told Reuters in a piece published on 10 August. “A new CEO often needs time to understand the business and set a direction. That is not the case here. This transition should be very straightforward.” Batista Filho has headed JBS’s business in the US since 2023, having previously overseen the meatpacker’s operations in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Canada, as well as managing JBS Brasil and food-processing company Seara, a JBS subsidiary.

Investors were not thrilled by the news of the leadership change, and the company’s shares dropped nearly 6% after the announcement. There are several reasons. For one, the company is facing considerable challenges at a time of diminished profitability and an ambitious expansion plan. It posted an unexpected second-quarter loss despite record revenue. The timing of a leadership change seemed questionable to some.

It may not have helped that the US, Batista Filho’s remit, has been the most troubling market for the global enterprise. Cattle-supply problems have hit the company’s margins in the US, and in June it announced it would close plants in Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

The change of the guard also comes as the meatpacker aggressively pursues ever-larger expansion plans, driving up its debt burden. JBS generates a lot of cash, but on 4 September its debt was around three times its shareholders’ equity, according to financial research website FinanceCharts. By comparison, its competitor Tyson Foods had a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.45.

In early August, JBS announced a joint venture with PT Danantara (DIM), which is part of Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund. The focus of the new entity, which will hold JBS’s Australia and New Zealand businesses and will raise up to US$2.5bn in debt financing, is protein production across Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

The return of a Batista to lead the company could spook some investors given the company’s history of controversy and scandal, and its poor record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. The change in management could bring “negative memories of governance issues in JBS,” according to analysts cited by Bloomberg in a report published on 11 August.

In May, international credit-rating agency Fitch Ratings wrote that “JBS’s ratings remain constrained by its corporate governance structure and ownership concentration”. Amid the sprawling Lava Jato corruption scandal, the Batista brothers admitted to bribing well over 1,000 politicians from several political parties. They spent six months in prison in 2017-2018 and stepped down from their board and management positions.

Wheeling and dealing

On 20 August Joesley Batista met with US President Donald Trump to discuss Brazilian beef imports, according to the Wall Street Journal. A day later Trump announced he would waive tariffs on 300,000 tonnes of imported beef for 90 days. Also in August, the Batista brothers announced they would acquire Avibras, a weapons supplier of strategic value to the Brazilian armed forces, after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged new government orders for the company. Avibras, which had faced financial difficulties for years, designs, develops, manufactures, and markets defence and space systems, including missiles, rockets, special vehicles, and civilian space launchers.