Kraft is now free to take another run at Unilever — but has good reason not to
In many ways, Unilever looks a different company from the one that came under brief siege in February
How time flies when you’re under the gun. It might seem like yesterday, but it is six months since Kraft Heinz abandoned its $143bn bid for Unilever. That means that under UK takeover rules, restrictions on the US group returning with another bid have expired. In many ways, Unilever looks a different company from the one that came under brief siege in February. After the bid spurred CEO Paul Polman into a strategic review, the company plans to buy back €5bn of shares, ramp up cost savings, raise the operating margin by a quarter and offload the spreads arm. These efforts have helped the shares rerate since the approach. That would undoubtedly make another tilt by Kraft and its backers, 3G Capital and Warren Buffett, more expensive. What’s more, although some shareholders believed Unilever rebuffed Kraft Heinz too quickly, Polman appears to have done just enough to retain their support. And he still has a couple of levers to pull. The first would be buttering them up with a knockout ...
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