Why Maximizing Revenue Isn’t a CEO’s Only Job | In The City

When former Unilever Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman was approached by Kraft Heinz with an offer many would find too good to refuse—a $143 billion takeover bid with a personal payout of $110 million—he says he turned it down. “They think everything is for sale,” he says. “Morals are not for sale.”

Polman, 67, who worked for Procter Gamble and Nestle before Unilever, joins David Merritt and Francine Lacqua on this week’s In the City to share lessons he learned while CEO, and why he says running a company is more than maximizing shareholder returns. “If you would listen to all the shareholders and do what they were asking you to do, your company would be bankrupt before you knew it.”

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Is London having another moment? Shaken by Brexit, decimated by the pandemic, threatened by new ways of working and a worsening cost-of-living crisis, the city remains Europe’s (and arguably the world’s) beating heart for finance and for culture. In the wake of turmoil, The City of London is reinventing itself. Every week on In The City, Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua and David Merritt go behind the scenes in the Square Mile and the wider metropolis, uncovering the stories and speaking to the people that matter.

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