HUL names Paranjpe MD

On the change in management, HUL chairman Harish Manwani said, “The changes reflect our commitment towards leadership development and our tradition of leveraging experiences and synergies of talent. Nitin brings with him significant experience of managing business and functional strengths in sales and marketing. I am confident he will bring further impetus to the company’s growth agenda.”

Unilever, too, announced many organisational changes. Building on the success of its One Unilever programme, the company will combine HPC and foods into a single category. “This will not have any impact on HUL,” said Manwani.

On the global front, Unilever announced key appointments: Kees van der Graaf will retire from the boards of Unilever and as president Europe at the company’s annual general meeting in May while Ralph Kugler, president HPC, will also step down at the AGM. Harish Manwani, currently president, Asia-Africa, will lead a new expanded region that will include eastern and central Europe. The roles of president-HPC and president-foods will be merged under Vindi Banga, currently president-foods.

Unilever Group chief executive Patrick Cescau said, “These measures build naturally on changes of recent years and give us an organisational structure better placed to advance our growth agenda.”

Earlier in the month, HUL announced its yearly results and reported a higher net profit of Rs 1,925.47 crore for 2007, a rise of 3.8 per cent. For the fourth quarter ended December 2007, the company reported a 23.5 per cent increase in the net profit at Rs 631.44 crore as compared to Rs 511.18 crore in the same quarter of 2006 on higher net sales of Rs 3,687.40 crore against sales of Rs 3,156.10 crore in the year ago period.