Linklaters and Clifford Chance (CC) are among eight firms to have been appointed to Unilever’s global panel, after a review of the consumer goods giant’s legal advisers.
The others appointed to the line-up include Baker McKenzie, Mayer Brown, DLA Piper and CMS, as well as US firm Cravath Swaine & Moore and Dutch independent De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek.
The new legal panel will run for a three-year term until 2021.
A Unilever spokesperson said the firms will offer support to to the company in many different legal areas, and as such are are not split into separate sub-panels.
Linklaters has a longstanding relationship with the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant – which produces household-name brands such as Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise – and has recently been advising on its high-profile restructuring plans.
The company had been considering moving its headquarters out of the UK, a move that would have seen it drop out of the FTSE 100, but announced last month that it had withdrawn the proposal.
Unilever has in the past turned to Slaughter and May for much of its big-ticket corporate work, but Linklaters has taken more and more of its key M&A mandates in recent years.
Linklaters took a headline role for the company on the defence of a multibillion-dollar takeover bid by Kraft-Heinz bid in 2017, while in the same year the firm also advised on the £6.5bn sale of its margarine and spreads division. Corporate partner Paul McNicholl is the magic circle firm’s client relationship partner.
Unilever put together its first-ever legal panel in 2014, with the company inviting firms to tender as part of an effort to formalise its relationships with its major external counsel.
