Many IT, finance and human resource functions are being outsourced in a programme that will lead to a 2,500 cut in headcount.M. It also recently abandoned the old practice of two executive chairmen of equal stature, a recipe for slow decision making if ever there was one, in favour of the split roles of chairman and chief executive.Whether that's enough to satisfy investors is open to question, but the progress being made by M. Despite City speculation that Unilever is set to follow Shell in moving to a unified company structure with a single listing in London, the board has yet to make up its mind.Unlike the situation that existed at Shell, Unilever already has a single board. Cescau readily acknowledges that he still has a long way to go, in terms of streamlining the organisation and improving the group's record on product innovation.As for changes to Unilever's antiquated, dual-domiciled structure, thought by some investors to be at least partially responsible for the recent paralysis in the company's affairs, there is still genuinely nothing to report, M Cescau insists. "The last big strategic rethink was called Path to Growth, but if you have a path to growth and don't deliver any, then you open yourself to ridicule. So I've banned names, along with the plethora of targets we used to have."

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Unilever announces its third-quarter figures today, which though unlikely to set the world alight, ought to build on the solid top-line growth that M. Cescau achieved in the prior three-month period.The stock market expects about 3 per cent growth in sales, which is nearly all in volume, given the lack of pricing power in food and personal care products.

Not bad considering the muddle Unilever was in a year ago and the still depressed state of core European markets.What's more, the cost of restoring this top-line growth, in extra advertising and promotional spend, is proving less significant than the stock market assumed. So margins haven't suffered as markedly as feared either.Yet a couple of decent quarters is hardly evidence of a turnaround, and M. "We have a strategy, but we don't have a name for it," he says from Unilever's temporary offices near London's Blackfriars Bridge, where he's camping out while the art deco splendour of Unilever House, overlooking the Thames, undergoes a refurbishment. But the cash-rich Swisscom was seen as the best-placed bidder, particularly now that the Irish company has returned to the lucrative wireless market.. Patrick Cescau, the chief executive of Unilever, has learnt from experience not to give new strategies fancy names. It is understood that at that stage no formal approach had been made by the Swiss.Eircom is the Irish equivalent of BT and the dominant incumbent operator.

It was privatised in 2002 in a move which split its fixed-line and mobile businesses. But Eircom re-entered the mobile phone market this year by raising €423m in a rights issue to buy Meteor, an Irish mobile phone operator, which is owned by Western Wireless of the US.Other potential suitors linked with a bid for Eircom include Deutsche Telekom and private-equity bidders. Some analysts speculated that Swisscom could bid €3bn for Eircom. Swisscom declined to comment on whether it was behind the approach.Eircom denied newspaper reports last month that it was in talks with Swisscom, saying it was "not currently in discussions with that company or any other in relation to a possible offer". Eircom is chaired by Sir Anthony O'Reilly, the chief executive of Independent News & Media, the publisher of The Independent. This is the second approach for a major player in the telecoms sector this week, after Telef?a's agreed £17.7bn bid for O2, the UK's biggest mobile phone operator, on Monday.