Swiss food company, the world's largest. Its brands include Maggi (seasoning), KitKat (chocolate), Nescafé (coffee), Purina (pet food), Nespresso (coffee machines), Perrier (water), Buitoni (frozen food), Gerber (baby food) and Illuma (infant milk). It is a market leader in milk powder, frozen food, at-home coffee and pet food (where it shares first place with Mars). It is a staple of Swiss pension-fund investment.
Nestlé has gone through three chief executives in little over a year, unprecedented in the company's history.
Mark Schneider, a former boss of Fresenius, a German health-care firm, became chief executive in 2017. He built up the health division with takeovers of Atrium (supplements) and Nuun (sports drinks), sold the skincare business and offloaded underperforming water and ice-cream businesses in America. The share price hit a high in January 2022. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine the following month, he faced steep rises in raw-material costs, supply-chain disruptions, rising interest rates and flagging consumer sentiment. He raised prices and cut marketing, but consumers traded down to cheaper brands. Competition intensified in emerging markets and the price of cocoa kept rising. His share price fell 31% in euro terms between February 2022 and September 2025, while rivals Danone and Unilever rose by 31% and 16%.
On September 1st 2025 the board sacked his successor, Laurent Freixe, for not disclosing a romantic relationship with a subordinate. Freixe had been tasked with refocusing on Nestlé's strengths and had ramped up marketing spending.
Philipp Navratil, a Swiss-Austrian company insider aged 49 who previously ran Nespresso, was hastily appointed as the new chief executive. Pablo Isla, former boss of Inditex (the Spanish fashion giant), is set to take over as chairman in April 2026 or earlier, as investors are clamouring to eject the current chairman, Paul Bulcke, who was instrumental in picking both Schneider and Freixe.
In 2022 two children died and dozens of people were poisoned after eating a batch of Buitoni frozen pizzas contaminated with E. coli. Nestlé has also come under fire for selling sugar-packed baby food in poor countries, for continuing to trade in Russia amid its war with Ukraine, and for using banned mineral-water-purification methods at the Perrier production site.
The $300bn-odd bottled-water industry is shifting upmarket, and Nestlé is at the forefront. The company has sold many of its mass-market water brands and is heading upmarket with labels such as Maison Perrier, a flavoured-water range launched with an advertisement shot by Damien Chazelle, the director of "La La Land". Environmental stress is driving the shift: climate change is making mineral water harder to source, with torrential rains letting polluted surface water seep into aquifers and prolonged droughts in southern Europe causing supply shortages. Under EU law, "natural mineral water" must be bottled untreated, constraining how brands can respond to contamination from pesticides, fertilisers and microplastics. Flavoured and "functional" waters (with added herbs, minerals and so forth) are not regulated as mineral water and can be treated and branded more freely. Nestlé's rival Danone is also doubling down on premium brands such as Mizone, a vitamin-enriched drink sold in Asia.
In the first half of 2025 sales in Nestlé's water and premium beverages division rose by 4.7% year on year, driven by flavoured products. Maison Perrier came close to matching Perrier's classic mineral water in sales, though supply issues held back the original. The water division's operating margin was 9.3% in the first half, against the group's 16.5%; a decade ago water margins were around 12%. Nestlé has spent heavily on automated bottling lines and infrastructure for the flavoured range. Last year it destroyed 2m bottles of classic Perrier after faecal bacteria were found in a spring.
In early 2026 Nestlé said it too would sell its ice-cream business, following Unilever's lead. Among other things, the company is betting on healthy frozen meals.
Potential candidates for sale include the remainder of Nestlé's troubled water business (3% of total revenue), some vitamin brands, Gerber, Illuma, and smaller confectionery brands such as China's Hsu Fu Chi.
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.