Unilever has allayed any concerns about what seemed an undue delay in the search for a new chief financial officer by luring American, Jim Lawrence away from General Mills. And not a moment too soon, as the question was inevitably going to come up at the results presentation by chief executive Patrick Cescau on Thursday.
The 54-year-old Mr Lawrence, chief financial officer at the US food group since 1998, starts in September, replacing Rudy Markham. The decision is likely to be welcomed by analysts and investors, who believed that Unilever was having trouble finding someone suitable after announcing Mr Markham's retirement in February.
It is the first high-profile appointment under the new chairmanship of Michael Treschow.
A Harvard MBA graduate, Yale economics student and father of three, Mr Lawrence was chief financial officer at Northwest Airlines before joining General Mills and also ran PepsiCo's emerging markets business. He has worked in London as the head of the Bain & Co consulting group and was a co-founder and chairman of LEK - where Mr Lawrence, joined Iain Evans and Richard Koch to make up the acronym. He is also a non-executive director of British Airways.
