Unilever’s marketing strategy calls for the elimination of nearly 1,500 managerial jobs worldwide.
The novelty is related to the pressure that shareholders are exerting so that the company improves its financial performance after the intention to buy GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer health unit, which failed. The operation involved some 68 billion dollars.
As Unilever said this Tuesday, January 25, the layoffs will be distributed as follows: about 15 percent of the highest-level positions and 5 percent of the managerial positions made up of young people.
They will not be affected factory jobs around the world.
Big changes at Unilever
The news came after it emerged that Nelson Peltz’s hedge fund, Trian Partners, announced that it had bought a stake in Unilever.
The company clarified that this has nothing to do with structural changes, which were already being planned for more than 12 months.
According to Financial Times, Unilever will also lose the president of the beauty and personal care division, Sunny Jain, who was hired by Amazon.
In the statement, Unilever said Jain left the firm “to create an investment fund in big technology trends.”
The Argentinian Ferdinand Fernandez, who has been head of the Latin America division since 2019, will become Unilever’s new head of beauty and wellness.
The restructuring of the firm is the largest in its history and will seek to divide Unilever into 5 different business groups:
- beauty and wellness,
- personal care,
- home Care,
- nutrition
- and ice cream
The objective is to try to recover a growth path that had stalled.
The plan to split the Netherlands-based food-related business into two divisions could, according to experts, herald a strategy to sell off parts of the operation. Indeed, the division into two of “nutrition” and “ice cream” is surprising.
When it tried to buy GSK’s consumer health unit, Unilever planned to divest some of its food brands with the idea that this cash would help pay for the deal.
From the division, each of the Unilever units, which in total have about 150,000 employees, will be responsible for the marketing strategy, growth and profits.
As he had declared Alan Jope, CEO, “Moving to five category-focused business groups will allow Unilever to be more responsive to consumer trends and marketing channels.”
Unilever made three bids for GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer health division, with the latest offering putting nearly $68 billion on the table.