Unilever’s slow but steady recovery is being put down to the insight of chief executive Patrick Cescau, a veteran of the consumer goods giant. Dean Best looks at what the Frenchman has done to breathe fresh life into the business.
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Steady as she goes. That seems to be the message at Unilever, the consumer goods giant behind brands from Hellmann’s mayonnaise to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
Unilever is showing signs that it is on the road to recovery after a somewhat rocky patch – and much of the credit for the turnaround is being aimed at chief executive Patrick Cescau.
The Frenchman has spent his entire business career at the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate. However, Cescau has worked right across the Unilever business, holding posts from New York to the Netherlands, experience that proved vital when he took the top job in 2005.
Cescau has embarked a root-and-branch restructuring designed to breathe fresh life into the business. Four years ago, Unilever shocked the market with an unexpected profit warning and industry watchers saw a company over-loaded with brands and factories failing to keep pace with more nimble competitors.
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By GlobalDataCescau has moved to change all that, creating the One Unilever programme, a strategy designed to boost efficiency, improve margins and, as far as the company’s food business was concerned, give it cash to invest in emerging markets and in health and nutrition.
In the last six months, Unilever has closed a raft of factories across Europe and sold off a couple of brands no longer deemed vital to the company’s future.
Earlier this week, the group issued its financial results for 2007 and insisted its more streamlined business could push on in 2008, despite the gloomy economic outlook.
However, Cescau remains careful not to overstate Unilever’s ambitions, perhaps mindful of the company’s recent problems.
One reporter at Unilever’s preliminary results announcement in London yesterday (7 February) asserted that the company seemed pretty upbeat on the year ahead; Cecsau disagreed.
“I wouldn’t say we are upbeat. We are reasonably confident,” he said. “Unilever has undergone unprecedented change. We are now building a platform for future growth.”
