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Like many Unilever subsidiaries, the U.S. company is virtually on its own. At the beginning of this year, it sent Unilever House a one-page memo containing estimates of expenditures, sales and profits for 1946. They were approved, as usual. Now all Chuck Luckman has to do is make the profits.
Trust v. Trust. But the operations of the Unilever empire are not quite so simple. In fact, they are so complex, and sometimes so purposely camouflaged, that even the top men of Unilever don't always keep them straight.
One reason for the complexity lies in the empire's swift, turbulent, helter-skelter growth. Founder Lever (Cofounder and brother James Darcy Lever reared early) couldn't resist buying up plants, setting up subsidiaries wherever he went (he circled the earth five times).
And then things were further complicated in 1927, after the empire collided with Europe's powerful trust, the Margarine Union. The collision evolved into a merger. Out of the merger came two new companies, Lever Bros. & Unilever Ltd., with headquarters in London, and Lever Bros. & Unilever N.V.,* with headquarters in Rotterdam. "Limited" controls subsidiaries within the British Empire, "N.V." those outside—including the U.S.
To make matters worse, World War II forced N.V. to reshuffle its holdings to keep them out of Nazi control. So U.S. Lever Bros, is now supposedly responsible, not directly to Unilever N.V. in Rotterdam, but to the Overseas Holdings Co. in Durban, South Africa. All told, there are four layers of subsidiaries between Cambridge and Rotterdam.
Identical Twins. Unilever House likes to say that Limited and N.V. are different companies. But for practical purposes they are the same. The board of directors of Limited, who get at least $40,000 a year and are usually bigwig politicians or financiers, are the same for N.V. But the board is controlled by Limited. It makes the policy for both companies. They buy materials together, pool profits, pay the same amount in dividends.
Governor of the board is William Hulme Lever, son of the founder and second Viscount Leverhulme, now 58. As his father did, he still owns the largest single block of stock in Unilever Ltd., enough to give him a working control of the company. Unlike his father, he has shown little flair for selling. Most of Unilever's plans are concocted by Geoffrey Heyworth, the stocky, handsome chairman of the board. A onetime Rugby player, he came to Lever at 18, has climbed to the top chiefly because of his rare organizational talent which has kept the empire running with a maximum of dispatch, a minimum of confusion. When Chairman Heyworth has some important business with U.S. Lever Bros., he does not follow the tortuous way to Cambridge via South Africa. Instead, he simply picks up the phone, calls Chuck Luckman long distance.
Growing Boys. Yet the mumbo-jumbo of subsidiaries came in handy during the war. Profits (e.g., from U.S. Lever Bros., estimated at $14,000,000 in 1945), which should have gone to Rotterdam and might have fallen into the hands of the Nazis, were simply stopped along the way.