Patrick Cescau wants to be remembered as the first chief executive of Unilever - before his appointment three years ago, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group had separate bosses in London and Rotterdam - and as the man who restored the 78-year-old company to its former glory.

How successful he is in achieving the latter objective should be evident on Thursday, when the £41 billion owner of Magnum ice cream and Dove cosmetics files first-half results, which are expected to show its fourteenth successive quarter of growth.

In the meantime, Unilever has brought in Egon Zehnder, the headhunter, to find Mr Cescau's successor. The Frenchman, who joined the company 35 years ago from one of his country's grandes écoles as an organisation officer in his native Paris, turns 60 this autumn and is expected to step down at next May's annual meeting. Unilever is looking internally and externally, but the assumption in the City is that the successful candidate will emerge from among four existing directors: Jim Lawrence, finance director; Mike Polk, who runs North America; Harish Manwani, chairman of Hindustan Unilever; and Vindi Banga, president for foods, home and personal care.

If Mr Cescau has a more obvious legacy, it is in shedding layers of middle management - Unilever is cutting 20,000 jobs over four years - and accelerating the company's expansion in emerging markets, which soon should account for more than half of sales. He has also earmarked non-core businesses with €2 billion (£1.6 billion) of sales for disposal, including its Bertolli olive oil business, which was offloaded last week. Talks on the sale of Unilever's US detergents business are dragging on, nearly a year after it was put on the block.

Mr Cescau's appointment as sole chief executive came in the wake of a 2004 profit warning - the first in Unilever's history - and the failure of its Path to Growth programme. Before promotion, he had worked in territories from Portugal to The Philippines and integrated two of the company's biggest acquisitions, Bestfoods and Lipton.

He lives in London with Ursula, his German-born wife, has two children - his daughter took part in research that led to the launch of the award-winning Dove advertising campaign featuring “ordinary” women - and describes himself as a “passable golfer and a good photographer”. He is a non-executive director of Pearson, the publisher, and was appointed to the Légion d'Honneur three years ago.