L'Oreal owns the Body Shop, which has a cruelty-free policy. The way L'Oreal operates, their brands are left to run their own affairs pretty separately, so you can have different branches following different paths. Also, each one tends to do their own development. Although the parent (L'Oreal proper) borrows from the "kids", there isn't a lot of sharing between brands. In fact, they're quite often competing for resources.
Being owned by L'Oreal likely won't change UD's policies, but, as Merenwen mentions, there are some customers who will avoid a brand simply because they don't want the money to end up with L'Oreal.
