Unilever chief Alan Jope set to step down after failed Glaxo bid

The boss of Marmite to Magnum maker Unilever is retiring – months after a bungled £50bn takeover at GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer health care company.

Alan Jope will step down as chief executive in late 2023, after a period of criticism for “wakeful” decision-making and clashes with the founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Shares in Unilever rose 1.8 percent, or 73.5p, to 4100p yesterday at the announcement.

Jope took over in January 2019 and the shares shot higher early in his tenure but have since bounced back to roughly where they were when he started.

He was paid £4.4million in 2021 and has received just under £12million over three full years on the job.

The consumer goods giant, whose products include Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Domestos bleach, this year dropped its bid to buy GSK’s division behind products like Sensodyne toothpaste.

That company was later spun off and floated under the new Haleon name and is valued at just over £25 billion, about half of what Jope had bid.

Unilever’s offer to buy it was met with disapproval from shareholders. Fund manager Terry Smith told investors Unilever had “lost the plot,” for example through a statement defining Hellmann’s purpose.

“The brand has been around since 1913, so we suspect consumers have understood its purpose by now (spoiler alert – salads and sandwiches),” he wrote.

Smith said executives “seemed to be obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the company’s fundamentals.”

There was also controversy over Ben & Jerry’s decision not to sell ice cream in the West Bank because sales “in the occupied Palestinian territories” were “inconsistent with our values.”

The brand’s owner Unilever tried to sidestep the feud by selling the Israeli portion of the company to a local licensee, but last month a U.S. judge dismissed a legal effort by Ben & Jerry’s to try to stop its parent company from carrying out the operation. of the Action.

Founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield said the sale violated an agreement when Unilever bought the brand in 2000 that gave the ice cream company’s independent board authority over its “social mission”.

Meanwhile, Unilever announced plans this year to cut about 1,500 management jobs.

Jope’s announcement of his departure came two months after activist investor Nelson Peltz joined the board after his Trian Partners built a stake.

Unilever faces rising costs and shaky consumer confidence. It said in the summer it had raised prices by 11.2 percent in response to rising costs, admitting it had some impact on sales.

Tineke Frikkee, fund manager at investor Waverton Investment Management, said Jope’s departure “may represent a welcome future change.”

She added: “The unappealing plan to buy consumer health care from GSK has somewhat tarnished Mr Jope’s track record.”

AJ Bell’s Russ Mold said: “Peltz’s influence is likely to only grow in the wake of this announcement and this could mean more radical action to streamline the group and improve its performance.”