Unilever to Buy Sara Lee Soaps for $1.9B

Dove soap maker Unilever has decided to spend $1.9 billion to acquire Sara Lee Corp.’s personal-care and European detergent unit, a move that marks Unilever’s biggest purchase in nine years. The purchase, which puts the popular Sanex shower gel into Unilever’s product repertoire, sent Sara Lee’s shares up at least 6.7 percent in New York trading.

The deal will involve Unilever paying cash for the division of Sara Lee, maker of several brands of soap that are extremely popular throughout Europe that drew in nearly $1 billion in sales in its last fiscal year. Sara Lee, which has been shedding many of its shares to focus on its coffee and food products, says that it will use the money to buy back around $1 billion in stocks.

Unilever’s new CEO, Paul Poleman, has been credited with refocusing the company to attract bargain hunters by employing price-cutting strategies. His efforts have led to an unexpected growth in sales volume in western Europe in his company’s fiscal second quarter, a development that may signal that Unilever can move from cost-cutting to actually increasing sales volume and pursuing acquisitions.

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