R. Chris Kreidler

BA, Economics and Managerial Studies, 1985 ; MBA, 1987

When PepsiCo recruited him to manage transactions in the buying and selling of companies for its Pizza Hut division, Chris Kreidler decided it was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse.

When PepsiCo recruited him to manage transactions in the buying and selling of companies for its Pizza Hut division, Chris Kreidler decided it was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse.

PepsiCo was looking outside the company to find someone who didn’t necessarily know a lot about the restaurant business but who knew how to complete transactions.

Kreidler had developed and honed his transaction expertise working with the renowned financier T. Boone Pickens. “I was hired by his company out of Rice. It was the first time Pickens’s company, Mesa, hired someone out of school,” says Kreidler, who started as a financial analyst and worked his way up to the executive ranks of Mesa Limited Partnership. With the opportunity presented by PepsiCo, he could form his own team, run it reasonably autonomously, and if he did it right, probably generate more cash flow than the operating company. “That sounded like a very fun job,” he says.

Kreidler developed the processes and built a team of about 30 people who worked on domestic and, eventually, international transactions. “After a few years, the international division asked me to join them, so I moved to London to handle business development on the European continent,” he says. That role was followed by a move to international division headquarters in Dallas, where Kreidler headed international mergers and acquisitions and international treasury.

In November 2003, Kreidler was named senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions and treasurer of Yum! Brands—the parent company of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver, and A&W All American Foods. Kreidler has traveled to six continents—everywhere but Antarctica—visiting their stores. “We have more than 33,000 stores in more than 100 countries,” he says, “and we are opening around 1,000 stores a year internationally.”

Kreidler appreciates the opportunities a global company affords him to see different parts of the world and the ways business is conducted. “Traveling around the world, almost every day,” he says, “I see situations I’ve never seen before.”

A big part of the job is thinking creatively and finding solutions. Kreidler credits Rice instructors with teaching him that the process for solving a problem must be created before the problem itself can be solved. He also learned to open his mind. “I got this from all instructors, across all disciplines,” Kreidler says.

It’s a lesson Kreidler remembers in his travels. Among his favorite places to visit are Beijing and Shanghai. “Their growth is tremendous,” he observes. “You just pick up on their enthusiasm.” On the other side of the world, Prague and Warsaw are just two of the places in Eastern Europe showing tremendous entrepreneurialism. “You can feel the spirit and their desire to grow their economy and succeed,” he says. It’s a spirit Kreidler understands.