A major activist investor is taking on the biggest food company in the world OR

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Reuters - Activist investor Daniel Loeb's Third Point LLC hedge fund on Sunday unveiled a more than one percent stake in Nestle SA and said the world's largest packaged foods maker needed to improve margins, buy back stock and shed non-core businesses.

Third Point, which disclosed its Nestle position in a letter to investors, also said the food company should sell its 23 percent stake in French cosmetics firm L'Oreal.

Third Point's roughly 40 million shares in Nestle would make it the company's eighth largest shareholder, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Nestle was not immediately available for comment. It said earlier this month that it might sell its 900 million-a-year U.S. confectionery business in the Swiss food group's latest effort to improve the health profile of its sprawling portfolio.

Third Point's stake was originally reported by Bloomberg.

Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Adrian Croft and Andrew Hay

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