HLL restructures its senior management team

Hindustan Lever Ltd has restructured its management committee; the new committee will be effective from March 1, 2006. As per an official communiqué, Douglas Baillee will head the management committee as CEO. The new management committee has a few new members, too, among them Sanjay Dube, Dhaval Buch, Anoop Mathur and Nitin Paranjpe. All the appointments will be effective from March 1.

Dube who is currently vice-president, sales and customer development, will be executive director, sales and customer development, after the restructuring. Buch, who has been redesignated executive director, supply chain, from March 1, is currently vice-president, technical. Similarly, Paranjpe, vice-president, laundry and home care, will be executive director, home and personal care, and Mathur, head of export operations, will be executive director, speciality exports.

Meanwhile, MK Sharma, D Sundaram and S Ravindranath will continue in the management committee. Sharma is vice-chairman with operational responsibilities for HR, legal, secretarial, corporate communications and corporate affairs. Sundaram will continue as finance director, and Ravindranath will be managing director, foods.

Sanjiv Kakkar has been appointed executive director, foods. He will be responsible for marketing and strategy and eventually succeed Ravindranath, when the latter retires.

Dalip Sehgal will continue as executive director, new ventures and marketing services, and will report to Douglas Baillie.

As per the official communiqué, the business directors will have profit and loss responsibility for their businesses to provide for a decentralised and simplified decision making structure. A single chain of command through the CEO will ensure the benefit of synergies across businesses. Functional directors will ensure excellence in functions and capability building.

Announcing the appointments, Harish Manwani, president, Unilever, Asia and Africa, and chairman, HLL, said, “The appointments are a part of our ongoing efforts to leverage the scale and size of our organisation, to bring more focus on our ‘Go-to-Market’ and brand building capabilities and to build functional excellence across the organisation. Together, these will ensure the company’s competitiveness and sustained profitable growth.”

“The business will remain focused on market leadership, cost leadership and thought leadership,” Manwani added.

These announcements are a part of the process of simplifying the leadership structure and follow-up on the earlier appointments announced on December 16, 2005. Manwani had announced the appointment of Douglas Baillie as chief executive officer (CEO) of Hindustan Lever Ltd, India, and that of Arun Adhikari as chairman, Unilever, Japan, with effect from March 1, 2006.

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