CREDIT: NAYELI REYES CUENTOS CULINARIOS

FINANCIAL STRATEGY

The rest comes from a pantry of citrus fibre, seaweed extract and stevia, the discreet molecules that pull sugar, salt or fat out of dinner without anyone tasting the difference.“ With the acquisition of CP Kelco, this transformation is complete,” CEO Nick Hampton says in the results the judges honoured.“ We are exactly where we want to be, right at the centre of the future of food.” The US $ 1.8bn purchase of CP Kelco closed in November 2024, two months after Sarah did, and integrating a finance function is less glamorous than announcing a deal.“ We had to cut off the umbilical cord from its parent and operate it independently, which takes a lot of work,” she says. The work shows in the numbers she reported this May, US $ 24m of cost synergies in the year and the US $ 50m annual run-rate target met a full year ahead of plan. That is what the judges rewarded, a decade of upheaval told as one clear plan. Companies mid-pivot tend to produce prose as tangled as their org charts.

The word most CEOs spend a career avoiding The sterner test came this spring, after the trophies were handed out. Tate & Lyle’ s results for the year to March 2026 were soft, revenue down 3 % in a muted market, so Nick opened with the word most CEOs spend whole careers avoiding.“ Overall, our financial performance has been disappointing,” his statement reads, in its first lines rather than

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