Vasiliki Petrou is leaving her role as chief executive officer of Unilever’s prestige division, a segment of the consumer goods firm she started a decade ago.
Petrou joined Unilever some 10 years ago to create a prestige division at the UK-based giant. Under her charge, the firm acquired Dermalogica in 2015 for an estimated purchase price of $1 billion; from here building a luxury beauty division that boasts 10 brands overall today.
Prior to Unilever, the executive spent more than 18 years at rival P&G, serving as global managing director in her most recent role.
“Today it was announced that I will be leaving Unilever at the end of July. A decade since I created the Unilever Prestige business unit, I have made the difficult decision to leave in pursuit of my dream to set up my own investment fund,” said Petrou, in a statement on LinkedIn.
“The idea of Unilever Prestige disrupted long-held paradigms and created a new to the world playbook of premium beauty acquisitions and sustainable long-term growth. Being the Unilever prestige founder and CEO has been a great honour and I’m proud of the many milestones we achieved together: A portfolio of 10 beautiful brands in just 10 years; becoming a €1.4B global portfolio and consistently growing ahead of the market. On a personal level, as someone who believes in lifting and championing women, being a female leader in a division made up of 80% women has been an incredibly rewarding and inspirational experience,” added Petro.
Her successor has not been announced.
In its most recent trading update, the foods-to-beauty group said company-wide underlying sales growth was 4.4% for the first quarter, with volume growth increasing to 2.2%. All five of its business groups reporting USG, led by Beauty & Wellbeing.
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