Shareholders may welcome the change in direction, but the chief executive’s predecessors used similar tactics
Hein Schumacher, Unilever’s new-ish chief executive, has already dialled down the worthy corporate sermons on social purpose. Now he’s ditching the ice-creams, including the famous names of Wall’s, Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s, and shedding 7,500 jobs elsewhere. Is this the hard-headed change of direction that shareholders, muttering about a sleepy share price and complacency in the boardroom for at least a decade, have been demanding? Well, possibly. But the script also has a familiar feel.
Remember that Schumacher’s two predecessors also tried slimming the corporate beast by offloading parts that were deemed low-growth or strategically challenged. Paul Polman, fresh from his close encounter with Kraft Heinz’s would-be takeover merchants in 2017, offloaded the Flora and Stork spreads business. In its way, that was more a radical move because spreads were a core part of the original Dutch end of Unilever. Alan Jope sold the PG tips tea business, which also had a lot of history behind it.
