By Alexander Marrow
LONDON (Reuters) -The Magnum Ice Cream Company has concluded that the chair of its Ben & Jerry's brand no longer "meets the criteria" to serve as a board member after internal investigations, it said in an SEC filing, as an ongoing internal feud continues.
The Magnum-led ice cream venture, which also incorporates the Wall's and Cornetto brands, is being spun off from consumer goods conglomerate Unilever in an Amsterdam listing now planned for December 8 after a delay of around one
month due to the U.S. government shutdown.
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 Israel-occupied West Bank. Ben & Jerry's has sued parent company Unilever over alleged attempts to silence it and called the conflict in Gaza a "genocide", highly unusual for a major U.S. brand.
Magnum did not name Ben & Jerry's board chair Anuradha Mittal in its SEC filing published late on Monday and provided no details on which criteria it deemed the chair of no longer meeting. Magnum did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mittal could not immediately be reached.
CORPORATE CONFLICT COULD BECOME MORE PRONOUNCED
Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen warned last month that the corporate conflict with the parent company would become more pronounced once the spin-off is complete, as the brand will account for a larger percentage of Magnum's business than Unilever's.
Unilever expects Magnum, which reported year-on-year organic sales growth of 5.8% in the first half of 2025 and revenue of 4.5 billion euros ($5.25 billion), to command just over one-fifth of the around $88 billion global ice cream market and compete with rivals such as Nestle-backed Froneri.
Magnum said it expects the global ice cream market to reach around $105 billion in size in 2029.
The admission of shares of The Magnum Ice Cream Company, with a primary listing in Amsterdam and secondary listings planned in New York and London under the MICC ticker, had initially been scheduled for November 10.
($1 = 0.8575 euros)
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow, Editing by Lisa Jucca and Conor Humphries)
