Unilever, Nestle appoints new finance chiefs

Unilever and Nestle have appointed two new finance chiefs as industry battles inflation.

Nestle SA and Unilever Plc are replacing their veteran chief financial officers, part of a changing of the guard at consumer-goods firms as inflation pressures the industry.

London Stock Exchange Group financial boss Anna Manz will take over from Nestle's CFO Francois-Xavier Roger after eight years in the position.

Graeme Pitkethly, the former manager of Unilever, will retire by the end of May next year. Other firms in the industry, including Reckitt Benckiser Group plc and Carlsberg A S, are also hiring new bosses. The crisis has created an existential challenge from a cost-of-living crisis, which has necessitated shoppers to tighten their belts and trade down to unbranded products.

The incoming manager will need to stem the erosion of market dominance without spending too much on advertising or new products, threatening profitability.

Manz, 50, will be the first female CFO in Nestle s 157-year history and the most senior woman in the company. Last week, the company hired Stephanie Pullings Hart, a former executive, as its new head of operations.

In 2015, Roger and Pitkethly took over their finance jobs just months apart. Both the consumer-goods firms doubled shareholders' money when they included reinvested dividends during their tenures.

While Nestle's growth was impressive, Roger, 61, helped steer Nestle during a period of remarkable growth even as the pandemic caused supply shortages, disruption and uneven demand in recent times.

We are disappointed to see Roger go, as he has built, to our eyes, an effective partnership with Nestle CEO Mark Schneider, a Jefferies analyst, wrote in a note. In Swiss trading, the stock fell by more than 1.6%.

Roger helped manage more than 100 deals, including the sale of Nestle's dermatology business, the sale of licenses to sell coffee products under the Starbucks brand and the divestment of part of the company's stake in L Oreal SA.

The last 21 years of Pitkethly's contract at Unilever have been more chaotic. In 2017 to rebuff a takeover by Kraft Heinz Co., the company prioritized a margin improvement, aggressively cutting costs and harming its brands. In 2018, it failed to unify its corporate structure and last year, Unilever made a doomed attempt to buy GSK plc's consumer-health arm.

Despite investor frustration, many of Unilever's top brass has remained the same, so a broader overhaul is expected after Schumacher starts as CEO.

Unilever shares were up 1.5% in London trading.

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