Last September, Niall FitzGerald, co-chairman of Unilever, one of the world's biggest consumer-goods firms, made what he thought was a momentous announcement. Instead of continuing with an unwieldy portfolio of 1,600 brands, Unilever would henceforth concentrate on a mere 400. The response? Unilever's share price, already falling, fell faster. Between June 1999 and January this year, the group's £51 billion ($85 billion) stockmarket value shrank by almost £20 billion.
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