Fresh off its expensive World Cup advertisement spend, which included covering the referee time board with its deodorant name, Unilever recently announced more stock buybacks. At a time when Unilever, one of the world’s largest packaged goods companies, has billions at its disposal to reinvest in its supply chain and animal welfare commitments, the company chose to pour the money into self-enriching stock buybacks. The result is a widening gap between what Unilever says it values and where it is actually putting its resources.

Recently, in June 2026, Unilever’s €1.5 billion share buyback program announced in February 2026 was completed. Unilever plans to support a total of €6 billion of share buybacks between 2026 and 2029.

Once considered a stock manipulation practice that was banned in the US until the mid 1980s, these corporate buybacks benefit those who hold the stock—primarily C-suite executives and shareholders. In fact, Unilever’s own board members purchased substantial sums of stock in May and June 2026, just before the formal announcement of a four-year six billion euro stock buyback program in its recent quarterly report.

This continuous caging is one of the worst forms of animal cruelty, yet by enriching itself through corporate buybacks, Unilever is choosing to profit from caged hens.

Unilever ought to tread lightly. In a special report, Reuters showcased Hewlett-Packard as one of the clearest cases where massive buybacks enriched shareholders in the short term but arguably undermined the company's long-term competitiveness, leading to massive layoffs and reduced innovation.

Moreover, this buyback program hurts the rank-and-file employees who keep Unilever, and its army of subsidiaries, running. Share buybacks can also reduce expenditure on research and development, skill development for jobs of the future, decent pay for staff and suppliers, and lower energy and consumer prices, which would reduce inflation and increase citizens’ purchasing power.

In fact, in 2024, Unilever announced they were eliminating 7,500 jobs. Coincidentally, in Unilever’s most recent quarterly results presentation, Srinivas Phatak celebrated the “€800-million-euro productivity programme" that improved overheads "together with continued simplification and cost discipline."

By choosing to reward shareholders, the company is neglecting to reinvest in its workforce. The consequences also extend to the animals who remain in cages, consumers who are fed empty promises and given less ethical choices, and the company itself, which becomes weakened when it chooses short-term gains over long-term responsibility.

Earlier in 2026, the Open Wing Alliance (OWA), a global coalition of nearly 90 organizations across more than 70 countries, united by a shared mission: to end the abuse of hens worldwide, launched a campaign against Unilever for its broken cage-free promise. Despite earning praise and positive media coverage for its voluntary commitment to free hens in their supply........

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