Trian expected to revive its P&G playbook with Unilever By Reuters

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON (Reuters) – Two and a half years ago Nelson Peltz, the billionaire activist investor who often presents himself as a partner with constructive advice for companies, told an audience of pension and hedge funds that no one had a monopoly on good ideas.

Sitting only a few feet away, nodding in agreement, was Procter & Gamble (NYSE:) Co Chief Executive David Taylor, who ended one of the industry’s most acrimonious corporate battles by inviting Peltz onto P&G’s board in 2018.

For nearly four years until Peltz’ retirement from the P&G board in August, the men traded ideas about how to woo new customers to buy Tide detergent and Pampers diapers. Since Trian first invested with P&G, the company’s stock price nearly doubled.

Now Peltz’ Trian Fund Management has built a stake in P&G rival Unilever (NYSE:) Plc, the purveyor of Dove and Lifebuoy soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Knorr bouillon, according to several sources. Trian has declined to confirm the stake and declined to comment for this story.

A half a dozen bankers and lawyers who have worked with Peltz for roughly a decade and watched him operate at a number of large companies expect he may soon bring the playbook that worked at Cincinnati-based P&G to Unilever’s London-based CEO Alan Jope.

“It is not that Nelson Peltz has a deep grounding in soap, but he knows his way around complex companies,” said an advisor who knows how Trian works but is not permitted to discuss the private firm publicly. “His team can work backwards from an income statement to understand what levers need to be pulled to make a company better.”

Unilever declined to comment.

At P&G, Trian criticized aging brands, a “suffocating bureaucracy,” short term thinking and sluggish shareholder returns. Many of the same problems https://www.reuters.com/business/unilevers-soap-opera-ma-job-cuts-grumpy-investors-2022-01-25 exist at Unilever, where the share price has been roughly flat for years. The company last week suffered a stinging rejection https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/unilever-offers-50-bln-pounds-gsk-unit-report-2022-01-15 when GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:) refused to sell it its consumer health unit, bankers said.

Unilever has already taken some steps to cut costs by consolidating its headquarters in London and getting rid of some slower growing businesses like its Lipton tea brand. Unilever, which employs about 149,000 people worldwide, on Tuesday said it plans to cut about 1,500 management jobs https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/unilever-cut-1500-management-jobs-strategic-overhaul-2022-01-25 in a restructuring to create five product-focused divisions – a revamp that echoes P&G’s reshaping three years ago…