Tesco vs Unilever: Who won?

We'll never know the detail of the settlement between Tesco and Unilever but it was in both sides interest to settle quickly.

Tesco faced the prospect of running out of popular brands, Unilever was being shut out of Britain's largest supermarket.

Unilever hasn't got the eye-popping 10% price rise it wanted but it has put its prices up. However Tesco wins this scrap on points.

There is no doubt in my mind that the supermarket leaked this story deliberately. They knew how it would play.

In the past Tesco earned a reputation for bullying small supplies, this time it was squaring up to a multi-national with well-upholstered profit margins.

The Tesco boss, Dave Lewis, used to run Unilever's British business.

He took the view Unilever was using the weakness of the pound as a pretext to make unreasonable demands, so he pulled the plug on their brands. That's pretty bold.

Lewis ruthlessly pursued Tesco's commercial interest: to keep its prices as low as possible.

In doing so he (happily) acted in our wider interests. He also sent a powerful warning to other suppliers that might fancy their chances passing their costs on.

And given the weakness of the pound and its prospects, there are bound to have been plenty of suppliers watching how this dispute played out.