Magnum Ice Cream says Ben & Jerry’s board chair not fit to serve

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By Alexander Marrow

LONDON (Reuters) -The Magnum Ice Cream Company has concluded that the chair of its Ben & Jerry’s independent board “no longer meets the criteria” to serve after internal investigations, according to a securities filing late on Tuesday, the latest twist in an internal feud.

The spat between Magnum and the Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s brand is heating up as consumer goods conglomerate Unilever prepares for the spinoff of the Magnum ice cream division in early December, which has been delayed by a month due to the U.S. government shutdown.

Until the spin-off, Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum are both ultimately owned by Unilever.

Magnum said in a filing that after commissioning investigations by external advisers, it found that the current chair “no longer meets the criteria to serve as a member of the Ben & Jerry’s Board.”

Magnum did not give any details on the nature of the investigations. 

Ben & Jerry’s website names Anuradha Mittal, the executive director and founder of the Oakland Institute, a think tank, as chair of its independent board focused on advancing the brand’s progressive social mission. Unilever has previously said the board has evolved into advocacy for controversial and polarizing topics such as the war in Gaza, a change drive by Mittal.

Magnum said in the filing that it informed Ben & Jerry’s board about the investigation and will consider its options depending on the response it receives.

It is unclear what action Magnum can take, however, as the board was set up to operate independently when Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever 25 years ago.

According to the merger agreement from 2000, replacing most board members requires a majority vote from the board, which is capped at 11 members. Ben & Jerry’s parent company has at least two spots on the board, according to the agreement.

UNILEVER AND BEN & JERRY’S AT ODDS SINCE 2021

Both Magnum and Unilever declined to provide further clarity. Mittal did not respond to a request for comment.

“This is a deliberate attempt to rewrite history and strip the Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board of the legal authority it was guaranteed,” Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen said in a statement.

Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s have been at odds since at least 2021 when the Chubby Hubby ice cream maker said it would stop selling in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. 

Ben & Jerry’s has sued Unilever over alleged attempts to silence it and called the Gaza war a “genocide”, highly unusual for a major U.S. brand.

Magnum in the securities filing warned it could face additional lawsuits from the board.

THREAT TO BRAND’S LONG-TERM VALUE

Cohen said Magnum was targeting Mittal and trying to grab power that would ultimately destroy the long-term value of the brand.

He warned last month that the conflict with the parent company would likely become more pronounced once the spin-off is complete, because the brand will account for a larger percentage of Magnum’s business than it does under Unilever.

Reuters could not establish whether Magnum, which plans secondary listings in New York and London, would be able to remove the chair.

Unilever expects Magnum, which had revenues of 4.5 billion euros ($5.25 billion) in the first half of 2025, to command just over one-fifth of the approximately $88 billion global ice cream market and compete with rivals such as Nestle-backed Froneri. In the securities filing, it says that Ben & Jerry’s is the second-largest ice cream brand in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

(Reporting by Alexander Marrow and Jessica DiNapoli; editing by Lisa Jucca, Mark Heinrich, Conor Humphries and Leslie Adler)