The special dividend amounts to 66.13p a share or 10.6% of the group's market capitalisation and is one of the largest dividend payouts ever made by a public company.

Unilever owns several famous tea brands including PG Tips

The move came instead of the share buyback, which many observers had expected to be the cash-rich company's chosen method of rewarding shareholders.

Chairman Niall FitzGerald said a special dividend was the most effective way to return capital to shareholders.

No mega-deal

And he said the move did not rule out the possibility of future acquisitions.

Unilever has been mentioned as a possible partner for other food groups such as Heinz or Kellogg, but to date no mega-merger has been planned.

Mr Fitzgerald said: "We don't see value in big acquisitions at current prices, and we do not see any pressure to do a big deal."

Profits down

The special dividend came as the company announced pre-tax profits of £3.01bn down from £4.7bn.

Walls ice cream is another Unilever brand

But last year figures included £2.6bn exceptional profit on the sale of the company's specialty chemicals business to ICI and this year's figures were ahead of analyst expectations of around £2.8bn pre-tax profit. Turnover for the year was £27.1bn down from last year's £29.76bn.

The economic slump in Asia and Latin America weakened consumer demand, but there were good profits in North America and Europe.

Mr FitzGerald said the company had achieved most of its plans to refocus the business on its core businesses of food and household and personal care products.

He added: "For two to three years we have working to rationalise the portfolio and we are seeing the benefit of that coming through in higher margins."