Sara Lee Corp. will sell its personal care brands like Sanex and Brylcreem for $1.87 billion to consumer goods giant Unilever and set a $1 billion share buyback plan, sending its stock up six per cent.

Sara Lee also said yesterday it has seen significant interest in its household products business, which includes Ambi Pur air freshener and Kiwi shoe polish. The divestitures allow it to focus on its food and beverage businesses like Sara Lee baked goods and Hillshire Farm meats.

The deal also reinforces Anglo-Dutch Unilever's global lead in deodorants and skin cleansing and marks the first major acquisition for new chief executive officer Paul Polman.

The businesses it is acquiring from Sara Lee see 85 per cent of their sales in Europe. Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes said she expected the entire household and body care business to be reported as discontinued operations in the current fiscal first quarter, a sign the company expects to be able to sell the other businesses.

"As the process proceeded, it became clear that there were different people who had far more interest in different pieces of this," Ms Barnes told Reuters in an interview.

She did not say which companies were interested in which businesses.

Credit Suisse analyst Charlie Mills said the price Unilever is paying of 10 times core operating profit, or EBITDA, is not huge by industry standards, which reflects the fairly disparate collection of brands.

"We're not convinced that this is the greatest collection of assets but another acquisition shows Unilever still moving from the back foot (cost cutting and disposals) to the front foot (volume growth and acquisitions)," Mr Mills said.

Unilever says the Sanex, Radox and Duschdas brands will complement its Dove, Axe and Rexona at slightly lower prices and strengthen its European business in key markets such as Britain, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Denmark.

Sara Lee said the brands sold accounted for 55 per cent of the profits from its businesses up for sale.