Magnum Ice Cream trims Ben & Jerry’s board

Happy board, happy life. Unhappy board? Ben & Jerry’s independent board of directors.

Magnum Ice Cream, the parent company of Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s, trimmed Ben & Jerry’s formerly eight-member board to only two directors, intensifying the challenge for Ben & Jerry’s to retain its socially conscious mission.

The last remaining independent directors left the board on January 1 after not certifying a new code of conduct from Magnum, per a filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Magnum said new independent directors for Ben & Jerry’s would be chosen by an independent chair, whom Magnum would appoint.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the removals leave a board composed of Ben & Jerry’s CEO Jochanan Senf and director Michiel Kruyt, who was appointed by Unilever, which acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 before spinning off its ice cream unit into Magnum in December 2025.

The initial Unilever deal allowed Ben & Jerry’s to retain an independent board, though its founders have argued that independence waned over the years.

Before its current board dustup with Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s had conflicted with Unilever since at least 2021, when the ice cream maker said it would stop selling in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The company’s conflict with Magnum goes back to at least late 2025, when Magnum said in a filing that Ben & Jerry’s board chair at the time, Anuradha Mittal, “no longer meets the criteria to serve as a member of the Ben & Jerry’s Board.” In its new filing, Magnum alleged Mittal “had engaged in serious misconduct that rendered her ineligible to serve on the board,” per Reuters.

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen voiced intense dismay with the governance changes at the time.

“They said that they’re enhancing the social mission when they’re actually destroying it,” Cohen told CNBC in December 2025. “They said that they’re future-proofing the Board of Directors when they’re actually dismantling it.”