Don’t ditch City HQ, Unilever is warned

CONSUMER goods titan Unilever will lose vital access to finance if it pulls out of London, major investors have warned.

Bosses at the Anglo-Dutch business – which produces everything from Dove deodorant to Marmite – are in talks over scrapping their City HQ and focusing on Rotterdam.

The firm’s board was severely rattled by a hostile £115bn bid from US rival Kraft Heinz last year. It fought off the predator, but investors fear that management is running scared and wants to take refuge in Holland, where company law makes aggressive foreign takeovers much harder.

One major investor said: ‘If they are going to unify, they should be unified to London. The rationale is more about takeover protection and the ability to do big merger and acquisition deals.’