Unilever is to split off its ice cream business and cut 7,500 jobs as new chief executive Hein Schumacher tries to deliver on his promise to turn round the performance of one of the world’s largest consumer goods groups (The Financial Times £).
The jobs affected will mainly be global, office-based roles and the company said its cost-saving programme aimed to save about €800m over the next three years (The Times £).
The FTSE 100 consumer goods giant said it was seeking to become a “simpler, more focused company” (The Telegraph £).
The shake-up follows a ‘disappointing’ year for Unilever, whose chief executive Hein Schumacher has vowed to turn the FTSE 100 firm around after replacing Alan Jope in July (The Mail).
The stock market in London has a fight on its hands to win a £15bn listing for Unilever’s ice-cream business (The Mail).
An in-depth look at the plan in The Times (£) says ‘Ben & Jerry’s is out in the cold, but its owner may not have licked the cost of living crisis’. just yet.
A business editorial in The Times (£) argues that investors could get a taste for spin offs following the latest move. “If his revamp works, he could find himself facing another demand: to hive off the food wing to slim down to a personal and home care group with potentially higher growth.”
The Lex column in The Financial Times (£) reckons the spin-off may increase the appetite for a further split. “Investor appetite might be whetted for bolder action on the group’s bloated portfolio.”
The editorial in The Guardian says that Schumacher’s plan to offload Unilever’s ice-creams has a very familiar flavour. “Shareholders may welcome the change in direction, but the chief executive’s predecessors used similar tactics.”
The Mail editorial calls it “a bold move” in that ice cream sales have outperformed many other of the consumer goods giant’s food categories in recent times, although a complex supply chain has a negative impact on profit margins.
The Grocer takes an in-depth look at what the ice cream spin-out means for Unilever in its Daily Bread blog. Read more here.
Tesco will stop using its Clubcard logo in its current form in a costly and embarrassing rebranding exercise for the UK’s largest supermarket after it lost a legal case against Lidl (The Financial Times £).
Three Court of Appeal judges rejected an attempt by Tesco to appeal the decision which found that it had breached intellectual property rules when promoting its Clubcard scheme (The Times £).
Legal experts said Lidl would have the right to seek compensation for infringement of its trademark, which could mean a further multimillion-pound bill for the UK’s biggest supermarket (The Guardian).
For more detail, read the story here in The Grocer.
Major brands have denied so-called “shrinkflation”, despite selling smaller quantities of a product for similar prices, saying there was no need for greater transparency as reductions are put online and shoppers are “savvy” (Sky News). A boss at Kraft Heinz told the MPs at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that reducing the percentage of beans in a tin, without bringing down the price, was not shrinkflation.
Aldi’s claim it had “Britain’s cheapest Christmas dinner” was found to be misleading after Sainsbury’s reported it to the advertising watchdog (BBC News).
Diageo plans to appoint as chair Sir John Manzoni, a former chief executive of the UK civil service, while the drinks group is trying to draw a line under a bruising year that has triggered a slump in its share price (The Financial Times £).
He will replace Javier Ferran when he retires in February next year (The Mail).
Manzoni, a non-executive director of Diageo and former chief executive of the UK civil service, will take over from Javier Ferrán next February as the group seeks to bounce back from a profit warning and the death in June of its veteran chief executive Sir Ivan Menezes (The Times £).
A market update in The Times (£) noted that Reckitt Benckiser saw its shares continue to slide as investors debate the size of the payout that the company might be facing on the back of issues surrounding its Enfamil Premature 24 product.
The Telegraph (£) examines how a shoplifting crimewave is forcing the retreat of self-checkout. “Retailers are questioning the use of unmanned scanners as the cost of theft rises.”
The EU has agreed to reduce imports of many Ukrainian foodstuffs to appease protesting farmers who claim a glut has reduced their income (The Financial Times £).
People who vape suffer similar changes to their DNA as smokers who develop cancer, researchers have revealed (The Times £).
The economic gloom hanging over Britain appears to be slowly lifting as figures show families are beginning to see household bills fall, leaving them with extra cash in their pockets (The Times £).
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