Unilever’s hasty meals deal leaves a bitter style – and places British jobs in danger, says ALEX BRUMMER

The dismemberment of Unilever, under the watchful eye of activist Nelson Peltz, cannot be greeted with equanimity. 

The fall in the share prices of both Unilever and its new food partner McCormick is hardly a great vote of confidence.

In recent years, this paper helped fight two great battles for the future of Unilever, Britain’s leading fast-moving consumer goods group.

In 2017, then-boss Paul Polman saw off the leveraged food conglomerate Kraft Heinz off after receiving an unwanted $143billion (£108billion) bid.

Three years later, we supported Unilever’s effort, in the face of Dutch opposition, to unify its board, management, listing and HQ in Britain – respecting its long heritage at Port Sunlight on Merseyside.

Unilever, similarly to ICI and Cadbury in their heyday, is one of the great bellwethers of British business with a reach into some of the world’s fastest growing emerging markets as well as the United States.

Raw deal? Marmite-maker Unilever has agreed to combine its food arm with US McCormick in a $44.8bn deal

I am very conscious of the fate of ICI, now almost a forgotten name. 

Remarkably, its pharma offshoot Zeneca has flourished as part of AstraZeneca and, for the moment, is the star of the FTSE despite the unfriendly reception it has, at times, had to endure from Sir Keir Starmer’s Government. 

Cadbury Schweppes was effectively defenestrated and lost as a listed-London firm due to the agitation of Peltz.

Conglomerates, notably Nestle and Procter & Gamble, in similar territory to Unilever, have been forced into radical change because of sub-octane growth. Nevertheless, they have largely held together.

Unilever, in contrast, has been jettisoning good enterprises, including its spreads operation, teas and ice cream with gay abandon. 

The argument all along is that beauty and well-being, personal care and home care is where the future lies. 

Certainly, the excellence of Unilever’s R&D in these areas and uncanny ability to take on and develop brands has been impressive.

Shedding assets and selling out, as evidenced by Cadbury, which has sacrificed the reputation of its products, can be an error. Unilever’s deal with McCormick is a mess. 

Admittedly, releasing $15.7billion of cash will be useful. It would allow Unilever to dive into the takeover market, perhaps fulfilling former boss Alan Jope’s £50billion ambition to buy out GSK’s consumer healthcare arm now renamed Haleon. It was an aborted deal which contributed to an early departure.

The current transaction may have been structured cleverly, to avoid excessive taxation, but it leaves Unilever as the 65 per cent owner of condiments champion McCormick.

Where ultimate authority will lie is unsaid. But the possibility of cost reductions – read redundancies and job losses – is high. 

Then there is also the curiosity of India where the group’s quoted offshoot Hindustan Unilever – which will be hanging on to Horlicks, Hellmann’s and Marmite – for the moment is a roaring success.

It is worth noting that far from being a declining, slow-growth arm, foods last year was responsible for 22.6 per cent of income, matching that of personal care. 

The idea that weight-loss drugs have undermined the value of power food brands is one of those myths pedalled by investment banks and PR executives anxious to get fat fees and bonuses over the line.

These pages have long defended British companies from being sliced, diced and sold on. The cries that Britain must be open to overseas investment and heritage doesn’t matter must be questioned. 

It almost lost AstraZeneca to the US in 2014, saw aerospace pathfinder Cobham defenestrated and allowed the nation’s finest tech company Arm Holdings to lose its British moorings.

Marmite, Colman, Bovril and Knorr may not be cutting-edge products. The fate of investment trusts, such as Herald, Edinburgh and Impax may appear marginal to the UK as a centre of financial excellence.

Unilever’s dance of the seven veils has been conducted in haste at the behest of a professional deal-maker in Peltz, who has no concept of the national interest. 

When Unilever put former finance director Fernando Fernandez in charge, it reduced a strong marketing and science culture and love of brands to simply numbers on a balance sheet. 

The sugar rush of the McCormick deal is hasty and ill-conceived.