(6 of 6)
Now accumulated U.S. profits of six years, some $80,000,000, are again flowing to Rotterdam. Some of them will be used to rebuild Unilever plants on the Continent, although they were comparatively little damaged. Some will go to pay N.V. stockholders a whopping back dividend of 29.6%, announced last week. Probably Unilever Ltd., which has never missed a dividend (10% in prewar years), will now boost its wartime rate of 5%.
How the profits from the U.S. eventually reach Unilever House is a Unilever secret. But few doubt that they are the basis of Unilever's ambitious postwar plans. Unilever expects to spend some $100,000,000 for expansion all over the globe. It also hopes to buy up what is left of the great German soap company, Henkel, and thus have close to a monopoly on the Continent.
Although some of Unilever's methods have smacked of monopoly, it has more often been an apostle of free competition, in which it has shown a notable ability to come out on top. For this reason there has been no talk of nationalizing Unilever, even if the Socialist Government could find a way through the labyrinth of subsidiaries. Furthermore, it is one of the few British companies which has come close to beating U.S. companies at their own game —on their own field. If Britain is to get on her financial feet again, that is a trick which a great many more British companies must learn. To some, the lesson from Unilever seemed to be: what Britain needed was not more nationalization, but more free enterprise—and more such grocer's boys.
*Reprinted by permission of Random House. Copyright 1940 by Louis MacNeice.
† Hulme was his wife's maiden name.
* And this is good old Boston The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots And the Cabots talk only to God. —John Collins Bossidy
*Naamlooze Vennootschap, meaning "limited liability."