Wayne Calloway; Ex-CEO Led PepsiCo’s Expansion

PURCHASE, N.Y. —  Wayne Calloway, former chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo Inc. and onetime head of subsidiary Frito-Lay, the world’s largest salty snacks company, has died. He was 62.

Calloway died Wednesday night of complications from prostate cancer.

The executive expanded the beverage company’s restaurant business in the 1980s, buying Kentucky Fried Chicken. In 1993, he was ranked as the sixth-most-admired chief executive in the United States in a magazine survey.

Calloway, whose mother toiled in a hosiery factory, was a laid-back executive who spoke with a folksy drawl.

Roger Enrico, PepsiCo’s current chief executive, once joked at a Harvard Business School alumni dinner honoring Calloway that his mentor “thrives on contradictions. He handles a Harley-Davidson like a Hells Angel, attends church like a Southern Baptist, absorbs self-help books like a Rhodes scholar.”

A native of Winston-Salem, N.C., Calloway attended Wake Forest University on a basketball scholarship, and earned a degree in accounting. In 1995, the university named its school of business and accountancy after him.

Calloway spent most of his career at Pepsi, where he worked for 31 years. From 1976 to 1983, he oversaw Pepsi’s Frito-Lay snacks division.

“It was under Wayne Calloway that Frito-Lay really took off,” said PaineWebber analyst Emanuel Goldman, who met Calloway in 1978.

Today, Frito-Lay is the largest maker of salty snacks such as Doritos and Lay’s potato chips, with 56% of the U.S. market.

Calloway left Frito-Lay in June 1983 to become executive vice president and chief financial officer of the parent company. Eighteen months later, he became president and rose to the top post in May 1986.

PepsiCo’s stock rose 462% during Calloway’s 10-year tenure, nearly triple the 157% increase in the Standard & Poor’s 500 during the same period. Pepsi’s shares fell 11/16, to 41 5/16, Thursday.

“He led PepsiCo to some of its greatest successes, and perhaps most significantly, assembled a remarkably talented team of executives,” said Beverage Digest publisher John Sicher.

One of those executives, Enrico, has been revamping PepsiCo the past two years, spinning off its restaurant operations so the company can focus on its snacks and soft-drink business, which lags behind Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co.

Calloway, who also served on the boards of Exxon Corp., Citicorp and General Electric Co., is survived by his wife, Jan, four children and his mother.