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The UK CEO cannot order a pay check for a soccer manager. However, the sudden expulsion of Hein Schumacher in Unilever shows that they have similarly short shelf life.
Schumacher abandoned the Coboss, so he piloted Unilever’s latest turnaround with only the second outsider who led a consumer goods conglomerate. Now he’s out at the end of the week and will be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Fernando Fernandez.
What works on the pitch is a pain in the C suite. Unilever has 128,000 staff across 190 countries, and has an unwieldy business that is gradually pruned. Investors, including US activist Nelson Peltz, have lost patience with Unilever’s performance. Rightly so: It lags behind its peers, such as Procter and Gambling in the US, margins and sales growth.
However, the shortened tenure is useless. About 20 months is not enough to turn back years of delays. Certainly, Schumacher’s self-styled growth action plan could have gained a little more momentum. Plans to separate the ice cream business, announced last March, stalled when buyers balked. A spin-off of the Amsterdam exchange is scheduled for later this year. However, division takes time. The US Conglomerate General Electric took two years to dismantle itself. Rival Honeywell has set up a similar timetable.
Performance, which is more easily rated at the league table, is a more tricky metric for businesses. Schumacher was primarily sided with a 9% rise in stock prices and a set of best results in a decade. However, Unilever’s stock has been following the peer group for a long time.
The sudden nature of the announcement suggests internal impatience. Peltz, who attended the board meeting in 2022, is the man after the action. Chairman Ian Meekins, who leads a dozen companies, has a reputation for moving fast. He was able to quickly wield x to the supervisor and business unit after he was at the helm at Wolseley in 2011. The building materials merchant promised investors that it would not be long.
Perhaps the board felt that outsiders like management consultants were mere tickets to lay out the blueprint for changes, but the execution was left to the man in wool stained Unilever. It was best to do it. As former finance chief, Fernandez has come to share Schumacher’s achievements, but he dismisses his flaws.
Consumer goods are an industry that is centrally trapped by home-made talent despite relying on certain innovations. Last year, Swiss Nestlé set up company veteran Laurent Frixe at the top to replace external employment Mark Schneider. Falling to Fernandez, he is now tasked with running the planned 7,500 job openings and starting an ice cream spinoff, proving to be a better choice to lead the team.
louise.lucas@ft.com
