Unilever chief is replaced in move to boost turnaround

Unilever has ousted its chief executive, Hein Schumacher, who has been little more than a year and a half at the helm, replacing him with its finance chief, Fernando Fernandez, to speed up the company's turnaround plans.

- Julia Kollewe

In a surprise announcement, the maker of Knorr, Marmite, Dove and Ben & Jerry's said Schumacher would step down on 1 March and leave the company on 31 May.

Fernandez, the company's chief financial officer and a Unilever veteran, will take over as chief executive when Schumacher leaves. Before he became finance chief in January last year, he ran beauty and wellbeing, one of Unilever's fastest-growing businesses.

He previously headed the Latin America, Brazil and Philippines divisions. An economist who studied at the University of Buenos Aires, he joined Unilever in 1988.

It is understood that the decision was made on Monday, with the board preferring Fernandez's appetite to rapidly execute the next phase of the turnaround.