Ian Meakins to Replace Nils Andersen as Chair of Unilever on Dec. 1
LONDON — Ian Meakins will take over as chair of Unilever later this year just weeks after the new chief executive officer Hein Schumacher began work at the consumer giant.
Meakins will replace Nils Andersen, who came under fire from British media last year following Unilever’s series of failed bids for GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer arm which is now a publicly traded company.
More from WWD
As the bidding drama unfolded, Unilever’s share price plummeted and activist investor Nelson Peltz arrived and took a seat on the board.
Peltz, head of Trian Partners, has since been working with management to make changes at the parent of brands including Dove, Vaseline and Ben & Jerry’s.
Unilever said Friday that Meakins will join the board as non-executive director and chair designate on Sept. 1 and take over the role officially on Dec. 1.
Andersen joined as chair in 2019 and served on the board for nine years. He will step down from the board at Unilever’s annual general meeting in May 2024.
Meakins is chair of Compass Group plc and Rexel SA, and has global business experience across a range of industries. He served as CEO of companies including Wolseley plc (now Ferguson plc); Travelex Holdings Ltd., and Alliance Unichem plc until its merger with Boots in 2006.
Previously, he has held positions at Diageo, Bain & Company and Procter & Gamble.
“It is a great honor to have been asked to succeed Nils as chair of Unilever. I look forward to working with the board, and with Hein and his leadership team, to help realize Unilever’s full potential and create value for all its stakeholders,” Meakins said.
Schumacher noted that Andersen “chaired the company through a period of significant volatility and some of the most challenging operational conditions in decades.”
“He was instrumental in sharpening Unilever’s focus on operational performance, creating a simpler and more agile company through the unification of Unilever NV and plc into one legal structure, and implementing our new category-focused organization,” he added.
Anderson follows former Unilever CEO Alan Jope out the door.
Jope’s departure capped nine months of disruption at Unilever, following the company’s failed attempt to purchase GlaxoSmithKline’s Consumer Health business, which is now a public company called Haleon that’s quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
Unilever’s move — and the price it was willing to pay for the division — irked shareholders, tarnished Jope’s image and saw Unilever’s share price collapse. GSK rejected three bids from Unilever, the final one valued at 50 billion pounds.
As that drama was unfolding, Peltz’s Trian Fund Management made an investment of nearly $2 billion in Unilever, and Peltz later joined the board as a non-executive director.
Financial analysts had long expressed hope that Peltz would join the board at some point and work with management, as he did with Procter & Gamble a few years ago.
On Friday, RBC Capital Markets reiterated its view that “there are signs of progress” at Unilever given its reorganization and the presence of Peltz.
RBC’s James Edwardes Jones wrote that a new chair had been a topic of investor debate and that a “clean sweep of management is ultimately what Unilever needs, given our concerns about its culture and the board’s endorsement of its approach to” the GSK bid earlier last year.
Andersen was roundly criticized by the British press for not doing enough to manage shareholder expectations, and Unilever’s share price crash, after news of the GSK bids broke in The Sunday Times of London.
Unilever’s shares were broadly flat on Friday, closing at 41.84 pounds.
Best of WWD
