Organisation

The three building blocks of our organisation are regions, categories and functions.

Three regions – Europe, the Americas and Asia Africa – are responsible for managing Unilever's business and local market operations in their regions. They are primarily responsible for building relationships with customers, managing supply chain networks, and deploying brands and innovations effectively, focused on excellent execution in the marketplace. The regions are accountable for the delivery of in-year financial results including growth, profits and cash flow, and in-year development of market shares. The Europe region includes our operations in Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe, and in 2007 accounted for approximately 38% of turnover. The Americas region includes our operations in North America and Latin America and represented around 33% of turnover. The Asia Africa region accounted for 29% of turnover, and includes our operations in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, North East Asia and Australasia.

During 2008 changes will be made to the regional structures. Notably Central and Eastern Europe, will be managed as part of the Asia Africa region – further concentrating our focus on emerging markets.

Two category teams – Foods and Home and Personal Care – are responsible for the development of category and brand strategies, the development of brand communication, and the delivery of relevant innovation. Categories also lead the strategic direction of the supply chain and are accountable for long-term value creation in the business, as measured by longer-term market share development, category growth, innovation metrics and brand health.

Building on the success of the One Unilever programme, Foods and Home and Personal Care will be brought together in 2008 in a single category structure.

Five functional teams – Finance, HR, IT, Communications and Legal – are responsible for providing value-adding business partnering, strategic support and competitive services to the whole business. They are each organised around the same basic principles of business partners, shared services and expertise teams.

Since 2005, the One Unilever programme has streamlined our business by creating a single operating company for each country – combining previously separate Foods and Home and Personal Care operating units into a One Unilever company – and by creating and outsourcing shared services centres for the back office operations of our Finance, HR and IT functions. In 2007, we announced new plans to accelerate change including the creation of multi-country organisations (MCOs) – clusters of countries with a single centralised management and shared functions – and further simplification of our regional supply chains.