Ben & Jerry’s independent board said it won’t stop overseeing the “social mission” of the brand even if parent company Unilever Plc sells or spins off the ice cream unit.
There is a “firmly established framework” that will “remain intact” to protect the integrity of a brand known for promoting progressive causes, said the board, which has had a fractious relationship with Unilever in recent years.
Led by Anuradha Mittal, the board told Bloomberg News that it’s here to stay and has played a key role in driving growth at Ben & Jerry’s.
“This robust framework is the key to our consistent alignment with our values and has been instrumental in achieving a 400% growth since our merger with Unilever,” the board said.
The move comes after Unilever said it wanted to shed its ice cream division, which generates around €8 billion in annual sales, in a bid to reverse years of lackluster performance. The soap-to-stock cube conglomerate has since also announced a plan to abandon or water down a string of environmental and social pledges.
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Questions are already being asked about whether Ben & Jerry’s unique corporate governance structure, enshrined in the 2000 merger agreement, will survive the split. The original agreement had no provisions for what would happen to the board if the Anglo-Dutch group sold the brand.
Ben & Jerry’s has long been defined by its “progressive social mission” and “we anticipate that the independent board will continue to guide this commitment,” a spokesperson for Unilever said.
Ben & Jerry’s has campaigned on many societal changes some of which have engulfed Unilever in culture wars. In 2021, the board had a high profile clash with Unilever after the group sold the rights to Ben & Jerry’s Israel business to local distributor Avi Zinger. The board sued Unilever for breaching the merger agreement before settling confidentially in late 2022, allowing Ben & Jerry’s to operate in Israel as a separate entity.
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Earlier this year, the board called for a cease-fire in Gaza. The UN Security Council later made a similar request, with the US abstaining.
In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Unilever Chief Executive Officer Hein Schumacher said Ben and Jerry’s is “of course is a very special case.”
“So the social mission of Ben & Jerry’s we’re not, I’m not disputing at all. In fact, I think it’s the one of the reasons that that brand has grown so successfully,” he said.
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