Unilever Out From Under Spreads

For the last few years, Unilever — likely the world’s largest margarine maker — has been trying to figure out how to make spreads cool again in the eye of consumers. But despite its best efforts to adjust to changing consumers tastes, it looks like spreads are pretty much dead.

Unilever plc (ADR) (NYSE:UL) is up 2% pre-market today on news of spinning off its spreads segment. According to the Bloomberg, Unilever is planning to split its spreads unit, comprising US and European operations, into a standalone business. This seems to be a part of the food company’s strategy to exit struggling categories and eventually turn around the business.

Unilever recently announced that it will be selling its spreads business to KKR for about $8 billion (€6.825 billion) on a cash-free and debt-free basis. The deal is expected to close by the middle of 2018. Unilever had announced its plans to divest the spreads business in April.

MUMBAI | NEW DELHI: Consumer goods giants Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser elevated two Indian executives into larger global leadership roles, underscoring the rising profile of managers with inherent knowledge of challenging but high-potential countries such as India as companies shift focus to emerging markets to maintain growth momentum. Nitin Paranjpe will become the head of Unilever's foods and refreshment business after the Anglo-Dutch company completed the merger of the two segments to create its largest business unit.

MUMBAI: Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India's largest consumer goods company, plans to shed jobs as part of the Dutch parent's global mandate to reduce costs across markets. While the extent of job cuts will be known by the end of April, senior executives privy to the development said it could be between 10% and 15%, including layoffs and reduction in new hiring. The company employs 18,000 people across factories and offices in India, according to its 2015-16 annual report, including more than 1,500 managers.

On Friday we wrote our latest take on how the ECB's CSPP, or corporate bond buying program, in which we explained how this ECB's latest market manipulating adventure is about to crush the fundamentals of the European (and soon, courtesy of the ECB's "SPV" loophole, global) bond market.

Unilever, the maker of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, withdrew a lawsuit against startup Hampton Creek Foods Inc. over the labeling of its Just Mayo product. A unit of London- and Rotterdam-based Unilever, the world’s biggest seller of mayonnaise, had accused San Francisco-based Hampton Creek of misleading consumers because its Just Mayo implies the product is mayonnaise, even though it doesn’t contain eggs. The ensuing debate over what defines mayonnaise created a backlash for the European company after Unilever edited consumer comments about mayo on its website.