FrieslandCampina CEO becomes Unilever’s new boss | Economy

Jope had already indicated last year that he would leave Unilever in the course of this year. Schumacher (51) had been a supervisory director at Unilever since last summer, in addition to his role at FrieslandCampina.

With Schumacher, Unilever opts for a new CEO who has earned his spurs in the food industry. Before joining the dairy group in 2014, he was active at Ahold and later at Kraft Heinz. Schumacher became CEO of FrieslandCampina in 2018. He will fulfill that role until the end of April. It is not yet known who will succeed him at the dairy company.

Unilever was a British-Dutch group until 2020. In that year, the management chose to abolish the double structure with a head office in London and a head office in Rotterdam. Unilever became 100 percent British. So now with a Dutch top man.

The company, which produces Magnum ice creams, Calvé peanut butter and Cup-a-Soup, among other things, believes that with one head office it can act more decisively when making purchases or selling parts. But Dutch tax rules were also an important reason for Unilever to leave. Dividend tax must be paid here, a tax on the profit distribution that a company pays to shareholders. Tax also played a role when Shell left the Netherlands.

The departure from the Netherlands took place under the leadership of Jope. He has been with Unilever since 1985 and has been the top boss since early 2019. The announcement that he would leave in 2023 came last year after a failed attempt by Unilever to buy the consumer business of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for billions. That company makes Advil painkillers and Sensodyne toothpaste, among other things. The takeover plan was widely criticized by shareholders. There was also a lot of pressure from shareholders to improve the results.

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