Unilever names Ben & Jerry’s new CEO and responds to hiring controversy

Jochanan Senf has been appointed the global CEO of Ben & Jerry’s, effective mid-July, the Magnum Ice Cream Company has announced.

Senf joined Unilever in 2003 and has held several senior positions in the group, including MD of Ben & Jerry’s Europe; global marketing and strategy manager, Beverages; and brand-category manager, Foods.

As vice-president, Refreshments Indonesia, he deepened his ice cream expertise having been responsible for driving in-country performance across categories including ice cream.

Most recently, he served as general manager, Foods in the DACH region with end-to-end responsibility for business performance, and was also vice-president of the Cooking Aids business in Europe.

Jochanan Senf will lead Ben & Jerry’s from mid-July 2025 as global CEO. (Unilever)Senf oversaw all aspects of Ben & Jerry’s operations in Europe for more than 7 years and contributed to enhancing the brand’s market presence in Europe.

A Unilever spokesperson told us: “Jochanan Senf has an impressive business record. He’s an ice cream veteran, he knows the business front and back, and he also knows all about Ben and Jerry’s as a brand.

“That makes him exceptionally well-placed to lead Ben and Jerry’s to an exciting period of transformation opportunity.”

Who was David Stever, Ben & Jerry’s former CEO?Former B&J’s CEO David Stever left the ice cream company earlier this year. (Hand-out/Ben & Jerry’s)The appointment comes three months after Ben & Jerry’s former CEO David Stever exited the company under a cloud of controversy.

Ben & Jerry’s board of directors – who are suing Unilever in the US for alleged overreaches – claimed that Stever had been effectively ousted by Unilever for refusing to block the ice cream brand’s political statements.

And B&J’s board had not been properly consulted about his removal, the ice cream brand’s directors claimed in a court complaint.

According to Unilever, the group had been carrying out a review into Stever’s role as part of a wider leadership shake-up ahead of the ice cream division’s demerger. (Unilever’s ice cream business is now operationally separated from the wider group and is known as The Magnum Ice Cream Company.)

Unilever also maintains that Stever had been offered a pay increase and a more prominent position at the Magnum Ice Cream Company, but had chosen to step down from B&J’s voluntarily.

Was the B&J’s board consulted over Senf’s appointment?In a new twist, B&J’s insiders told The Wall Street Journal that Jochanan Senf had been installed at the helm of Ben & Jerry’s without proper consultation with the ice cream brand’s independent board of directors.

According to the merger agreement struck between Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, B&J’s CEO is appointed by Unilever ‘after good faith consultation’ with the ice cream brand’s directors.

The agreement reads: “The Chief Executive Officer of the Surviving Corporation shall be designated by Conopco, after good faith consultation with, and the participation in discussions of, the Appointment Committee of the Surviving Corporation Board (consisting of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, unless they are not directors, in which case such committee shall include one or two directors, as the case may be, from among the Class I Directors and Class M Directors).

Ben Cohen (left) and Jerry Greenfield founded Ben & Jerry’s in 1978. (Steph Miles/Ben & Jerry’s / Unilever)B&J’s board ‘had every opportunity’ to take part in CEO selection: Unilever respondsBut Unilever denied that it did not cooperate with B&J’s directors during the CEO hiring process.

A Unilever spokesperson told us: “Our approach throughout all of this has been and continues to be focused on collaboration in line with the merger agreement between Unilever and Ben and Jerry’s.

“In terms of the appointment of a CEO, the agreement explicitly says that there is discussion between the management of the company and the independent board of Ben and Jerry’s.

“The independent board does not have operational control or say-so over Ben and Jerry’s; it has a primary responsibility for the social mission priorities and also for brand integrity, but not over the operational control of the business, [such as] the decision to appoint a CEO. We are required to discuss that and that is exactly what we’ve done.

“We’ve invited the independent board to provide their feedback on the role description; we incorporated their feedback in that [and] also introduced them to the outside recruiting firm that supported us throughout this process.

“We encouraged them to interview the internal and the external candidates, even though that merger agreement doesn’t require us to do so or entitle them to do so.”

“We also invited them to share their feedback throughout the process, including taking part in the discussion as a final evaluation of candidates.

“Now, throughout all of this, the response from the independent board has been to either decline the request, to delay the process and timings, or in fact, to threaten litigation.

“So throughout, we’ve acted in good faith. That’s regrettably not been the response from the independent board.

“They’ve had every opportunity to take part in the process and any intimation to the contrary is simply incorrect.”