Unilever

CHICAGO - Consumer products giant Unilever announced plans yesterday to spin off the baked goods unit of newly acquired Bestfoods, and Sara Lee Corp. immediately surfaced on analysts' lists of potential acquirers. The announcement comes amid a flurry of takeovers and sales in the food industry as companies try to sharpen their focus and grow to thrive and control costs. Earlier this month, Unilever completed its takeover of Bestfoods. with brands such as Hellmann's mayonnaise and Skippy peanut butter.

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS. N.J. -Unilever NV, the world's second-largest food company, has offered to buy Bestfoods for $18.3 billion in cash, an unsolicited bid that the U.S. food company rejected as inadequate. Bestfoods, maker of Hellmann's dressings and Skippy peanut butter, said Unilever offered $66 a share yesterday and in April bid $61 to $64. Unilever, a British-Dutch company that makes Lipton teas and Q-Tip swabs, couldn't be reached for comment. Unilever has been buying well-known brands it can market world-wide, spending $2.6 billion last month for SlimFast diet foods and Ben & Jerry's ice creams.

Less than two weeks after saying that it was considering a plan to be taken private, Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. has reached an agreement to be sold to Unilever PLC. The agreement, which was described by people close to the takeover talks, was apparently reached late yesterday during a lengthy meeting of the Ben & Jerry's board in New York. An assistant to Ben & Jerry's chief financial officer, Frances Rathke, would not comment last night. Unilever's spokesman and the company's investment banker did not return telephone calls.

WASHINGTON -- Amid all the furor over the raising of campaign funds from foreign sources, there was a most unusual article the other day on the op-ed page of the New York Times. The head of an American subsidiary of a company based abroad complained, of all things, that it was unfair that such firms and their American employees are now barred from making contributions to the Democratic National Committee.Most average folks would probably be all too happy to have an excuse to turn away a politician -- even Vice President Al Gore -- who was trying to dun them for a cash gift in the election season.