Unilever moving closer to unifying shares but no decision on HQ location

A day ahead of its annual strategy event, Unilever confirmed the current year remained on track and said its review of its dual-headed legal structure was ongoing but that it considered a share unification with a single share class "would be in the best interests of Unilever and its shareholders as a whole".

As a "geographically diversified business with a very small corporate centre", the board envisage the process will lead to the slimming down to a single "lean, agile" head office.

Some analysts and investors had hoped the outcome of the review by the board of directors, or at least a strong indication, would be announced this week but Unilever said the announcement will be made "in due course".

Whatever the outcome, upon any unification, the board said it intends to maintain listings in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States; will continue to apply both the UK and Dutch corporate governance codes; and terminate the NV preference shares, all subject to the appropriate approvals.

Presentations at the investor event on Wednesday and Thursday will include an update on Unilever's 2020 programme to accelerate sustainable shareholder value creation.

On Tuesday, the company said the Connected 4 Growth programme was expected to deliver market-beating growth, translating into underlying sales growth of 3-5% per year between now and 2020.

The 5-S supply chain savings and zero-based budgeting programmes were "delivering faster than planned", which, along with the integration of foods and refreshment into a single business unit, were said to enable increased reinvestment in brands as the company works towards achieving an underlying operating margin target of 20% by 2020.