Unilever boss Alan Jope isn’t off the hook just yet

HAS Alan Jope got a target on his back?

The Unilever CEO was already facing pressure from disgruntled investors over the company’s plodding growth rate. This week’s shenanigans can’t have helped.

Jope’s surprise tilt at GSK’s consumer healthcare business looks dead in the water after Unilever was last night forced to draw a line under bidding at £50 billion. It followed a disastrous share price decline as investors fretted that the company was going to overpay.

The share price has ticked up today but is still down 5% since news of the approach first broke.

There are lingering questions about Jope’s strategy. Despite the failure of the GSK bid, he is committed to going all-in on the fast-growing markets of health, hygiene and beauty. He plans to do so through a major acquisition and dumping low-growth brands along the way. The City will get more details in a proper strategy update next month.

Analysts suggest parts of Reckitt Benckiser and Johnson & Johnson may be on his shopping list. Investors should ask the simple question: why? These targets are already publicly listed. If people wanted to buy into them, they would.

Unilever’s shareholders own it for the assets it already has. A costly, painful and likely long transformation isn’t much fun.

Jope is wobbling on the tightrope. If he falls, he won’t be the first Unilever boss sunk by their vision. Predecessor Paul Polman’s botched effort to move Unilever’s HQ to the Netherlands did for him. A sign of things to come perhaps?