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New, improved Unilever delivers the goods
Unilever is a great European company, one of the two Anglo-Dutch giants along with Shell. Usually it gets beaten up a bit by long-time rival Procter & Gamble and just recently it's taken a sharp poke in the ribs from fast-rising upstart Reckitt-Benckiser, the Cillit Bang boys.

But under Niall Fitzgerald, and, latterly, French CEO Patrick Cescau, it's managed to slim itself down (under Fitzgerald's "path to growth" policy of dumping marginal brands). Margins have revived through a bigger emphasis on growth markets in the Far East and directing company managers towards sales and profits, rather than trying to micro-manage everything in sight (now done by head office presumably).

It still lags the ferocious P&G and it can't match the growth record of the much smaller Reckitt-Benckiser (which is due to report annual earnings on Wednesday) but it's managed to lift profit margins to around 13% on sales growth of 5.5%. No mean feat in today’s troubled markets.

When Fitzgerald took over as CEO a decade ago, he was at first hailed as the saviour of the company but then, when his path to growth looked like a path to where the company was before, derided as another loquacious Irishman. Particularly as lots of smaller companies did rather well by snapping up the brands Unilever flogged off.

Cescau, a finance man, was never taken seriously by the City because it thought he was just expediting the fag end of Fitzgerald,s strategy.

But the strategy has worked.

Fitzgerald realised that Unilever could only cope with so many business channels and was ruthless in reducing them. Cescau has realised that the outlook of the company's national managers had to change in line with the slimmed-down portfolio.

With a turnover of €40bn and a net profit of €5bn, Unilever remains a mighty force; which is just as well for the rest of the marketing, media and advertising spectrum because it's the one big European company that actually believes in it all.

The City marked down its shares last week because Cescau is being cautious about a big share buy-back (because he knows he needs money to invest, particularly with commodity prices going through the roof) and because he's spending much more on advertising and promotions.

But that's how P&G's always done it. But we still don't really get brands in this country, despite all the lip service that’s paid to them.

Hazlitt’s hot welcome at GCap
Poor Fru Hazlitt, she finally gets the job she's always wanted (CEO of GCap, the owner of Capital Radio and Classic FM) and no sooner has she landed in Leicester Square than she finds Charles Allen's small but perfectly formed tanks parked outside.

Allen's new firm Global Radio (backed by the "Coolmore Mafia" of rich Irish horse dealers) bid 190p a share for GCap just before Christmas, before Ms Hazlitt had even arrived from SMG's Virgin Radio.

This morning, he on her in an FT interview, saying she would need to triple current profits to offer the shareholders the same value as Global's bid.

This is open to debate but it's a bruising siting shot.

Hazlitt unveils her plans to shareholders, who include Daily Mail & General Trust, Fidelity and Schroders, today.

Insiders reckon she will announce that GCap is effectively pulling out of standalone digital radio stations (few of which have gained any kind of credible audience), a bitter pill for former CEO Ralph Bernard, the founder of Classic and the architect of the deal with Capital, who bet the house on digital.

She is also likely to dump Bernard's idea of playing no more than two ads together, which should help revenue a bit.

Radio's trouble is that, in a UK market where online advertising is threatening to overtake TV, it comes a long way down the advertiser priority list.

But it would be tough on Hazlitt if shareholders decide to take the money and run so soon into her reign.

Is Setanta the next media company to join the auction?
The auction being a fire sale of media companies depressed by low share valuations. , which is challenging Sky rather successfully for the pay-per-view football market, couldn't be described as such.

But everyone knows that at some stage it will have to raise more capital and a share listing was the obvious route.

But with media shares still relatively friendless, the other option for the company is a trade sale, which would be disappointing for founders Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan (those hyperactive Irish again).

O'Rourke and Ryan would be able to console themselves with around £100m each (according to Mark Kleinman in The Telegraph) if another shareholder, Goldman Sachs, succeeds in drumming up outside bids.

One European company is sniffing around already, says The Telegraph (but it doesn't appear to know who it is) and others including ESPN, Virgin (which has an important carriage deal with Setanta) and ITV are likely to be interested.

Actually, Setanta would be a deal made in heaven for ITV, but can it afford a price somewhere north of £1bn for starters?

The clock’s ticking for Microsoft and Yahoo!
is expected to reject Microsoft's unwelcome $41.8bn bid for the company today although it's hard to see it escaping Bill Gates'and Steve Ballmer's clutches in the long term.

A year ago, Microsoft apparently hinted it would pay $43bn for Yahoo! but Yahoo!'s shares were much higher then.

Yahoo!'s problem is that it doesn't seem to have anywhere else to go. A tie-up with Google would cause even more regulatory problems than a deal with Microsoft and would quite clearly be a blocking move (Google doesn't need Yahoo!).

The trouble is, no one else seems to want it either. So a rejection just seems to be a lever to prise out a bit more Microsoft money. The problem for Microsoft is that the longer this goes on, the more likely Yahoo!'s techies are likely to vote with their feet.

They'll get a warm welcome at Google and there'll also be no shortage of Silicon Valley investment funds ready to back them in the hope of discovering the next big thing.

Microsoft needs to get its skates on.

Stephen Foster is a former news editor of ±±¾©Èü³µpk10, former editor of Marketing Week and Evening Standard ad columnist. He is a partner in Editorial Partnership and writes the blog and Politics of the Media for Brand Republic.