US billionaire wins seat on board of Unilever

Unilever shares soared after activist investor nelson Peltz joined the board of the consumer goods giant.

The FTSe100 firm, which makes Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Marmite and Dove soap, said the billionaire will become a non-executive director having built up a 1.5pc stake through his investment vehicle Trian Fund Management.

The elevation of the 79-year-old to the board followed meetings with Unilever chief executive Alan Jope and chairman nils Andersen.

Shares jumped 9.4pc, or 329.5p, to 3825p on the news, as analysts said Peltz could help to turn Unilever’s fortunes around.

investors are hoping he will use his position on the board to spearhead a turnaround similar to those he helped oversee at other consumer goods giants including Gillette owner Procter & Gamble. Analysts said he could push for the group to sell struggling brands to focus on faster-growing businesses, and increase its focus on more profitable sectors.

Unilever shares have fallen 15pc since Jope took the top job in January 2019, significantly lagging the FTSe 100 which is up 13pc in the same period.

its value headed back towards £100bn again yesterday, closing at £95.1bn, valuing Peltz’s stake at around £1.42bn.

Peltz said he was ‘delighted’ to be joining the board and that Trian had made ‘a considerable investment in Unilever’.

He said: ‘We believe it is a company with significant potential, through leveraging its portfolio of strong consumer brands and its geographical footprint.’

Andersen said: ‘Peltz’s experience in the global consumer goods industry will be of value to Unilever as we continue to drive the performance of our business.’ His stake was first revealed in January amid a series of dramatic setbacks for the Dutch consumer goods giant. And Peltz’s emergence piled further pressure on Jope after an embarrassing U-turn saw him pull out of an audacious £50bn takeover bid for GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer arm.

Jope’s repeated attempts to buy the GSK business – which is being spun off into a separate company named Haleon next month – were slammed by investors and analysts and sent Unilever’s share price tumbling.

Another investor Terry Smith, who owns 0.8pc of Unilever through his firm Fundsmith, called the saga a ‘near death experience’.

He said bosses needed to focus on fixing Unilever’s flagging business before looking to buy others.

And it came after an earlier row with Smith who publicly blasted Jope over Unilever’s obsessive focus on ‘woke’ issues.

He lashed out at Unilever for being ‘obsessed’ with its sustainability credentials. Smith said that Unilever had ‘lost the plot’ by trying to define ‘the purpose’ of some of its brands like Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

Following the setbacks, Unilever kicked off a process to streamline its sprawling business that will see it cut jobs and simplify its structure into five units.

it has also consolidated its headquarters in london to cut costs and last year offloaded its slowgrowing lipton tea business.

Peltz is renowned for pushing strategic and governance changes at companies he is involved in. His firm Trian was responsible for an overhaul at Cadbury that saw it spin off its drinks business Schweppes before it was bought by US giant Kraft.

Peltz also spearheaded an overhaul after taking a stake in P&G and joining its board.

He criticised its ageing brands and a ‘suffocating bureaucracy’ leading to poor shareholder returns. Shares have soared since he invested in the business.