The consumer goods giant, whose brands include the likes of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Tresemme shampoo, was reported to have demanded price increases on its products in a bid to offset higher input costs caused by the fall in sterling.
If a company has to buy lots of ingredients in euros and dollars and then sell the subseqent products in sterling, it's going to have a bad impact. The particular focus by the press on Marmite, though, happens to ignore the fact it is made in Burton-on-Trent and the ingredients don't appear as if they would need to be imported.
Tesco clearly wanted to avoid delisting some major household brands if its competitors stock them and it won't want to derail the recent recovery in its UK like-for-like sales growth so hard-fought for by new chief Dave Lewis.
In terms of Unilever, the recent sales and volume growth pattern hasn't been going entirely to plan, although as the chart below shows, its moves to become more efficient as a business mean the bottom line is being protected for now.
Geographically speaking, Europe as a whole accounted for a quarter of group sales, according to Unilever's third quarter update released on 13 October but the UK is more like 5 per cent. While this is small, the company might not want to put the rocky sales pattern within the European region at risk.
Looking at the regional mix of its underlying sales growth, it seems clear that the Americas are the key driver of growth with its Asia, Africa, Middle East, Turkey and Russia divisions following behind.
The negotiations were made more interesting for the consumer goods company because it was facing one of its own in Tesco chief Mr Lewis, who used to head up Unilever's global toiletries business having joined the group as a garduate trainee in 1987.
It's also worth noting Tesco has won such a battle before. Back in 2011 it delisted brands owned by Premier Foods (PFD) after that company insisted on prove increases. Of course though, even back in February 2011 when Premier's market cap was more than £600m, it paled in comparison to its multinational rival.
