LONDON, March 21, 2026, 19:05 GMT
Unilever PLC shares closed 0.47% higher at 4,595.5 pence on Friday after the company said it had received an inbound offer for its Foods business and was in talks with McCormick & Co. The move gave the stock some relief after a rough week of spin-off and deal speculation. 1
This matters because Foods is still a large piece of Unilever. The unit made 12.9 billion euros of sales last year, more than a quarter of group sales, but it grew just 2.5%, below the company’s 4% to 6% goal and slower than other divisions. 2
Chief Executive Fernando Fernandez has been pushing Unilever toward faster-growing beauty, household and personal care lines since the ice cream demerger last year. Friday’s rise only partly repaired the slide earlier in the week, when investors fretted that another big separation could soak up management time. 3
Unilever said its board still saw Foods as a “highly attractive business” and warned there was no certainty a transaction would be agreed. That came after reports that separate talks with Kraft Heinz on a food tie-up had already ended. 4
Barclays puts the food arm at 28 billion to 31 billion euros, a size that dwarfs McCormick’s roughly $14.5 billion market value. That is why analysts keep pointing to a Reverse Morris Trust, a tax-efficient structure in which a company spins off a unit and then merges it with a buyer. 3
Robert Moskow of TD Cowen said the deal had “strong strategic logic” and could give McCormick more scale and global reach with retailers. Neil Saunders at GlobalData called McCormick a “natural fit” but said the real test would be whether it can pull acceptable returns from a softer food market. 5
Richard Saldanha, a portfolio manager at Aviva, said it was sensible for Unilever to review a slower-growth food portfolio while beauty and personal care offer better category growth. Chris Beckett at Quilter Cheviot said the hard part would be finding a structure that gives Unilever holders a premium and still works for McCormick shareholders. 3
The peer picture is shifting, too. Kraft Heinz had been one possible route before those talks ended, and a McCormick deal would bring Hellmann’s and Knorr together with Cholula, French’s and Frank’s RedHot in a much bigger condiments and cooking-aids business. 6
But there is a real downside case. Foods is already under pressure from cheaper supermarket own-label rivals and from GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, medicines that can curb appetite, while any split would force Unilever to untangle supply chains and distribution systems built over decades. 2
Davis Householder of MycoManagement said the harder issue was not only financing but separating a global food platform without disrupting operations. For now, investors have confirmation of talks, not a signed deal, and Unilever’s share price is still trading in that gap. 5
