Ben & Jerry
In April 2000, Unilever made its bid for Ben & Jerry’s for $326 million. Unilever leadership was well aware of Ben & Jerrys unique history and brand. The merger was subject upon the following:
First, Ben & Jerrys would retain its brand name, rather than be absorbed into one of company’s existing brands, a standard practice for Unilever acquisitions.
Unilever would retain all of Ben & Jerry’s employees for a minimum of two years following the acquisition.
Unilever committed an initial $5 million contribution to the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation.
Unilever created an “external board” – made up of Ben & Jerry’s CEO, as well as five business people from the company to help the CEO with managing the brand.
Board members were empowered to file lawsuits in the event they did not feel Unilever was living up to the agreement.
Overall, Unilever stated that they were buying the integrity of the brand and Ben & Jerrys should not worry about the values of the company.
After the Merger
The companies worked to establish a number of organizational processes and controls to ensure financial transparency and ease of communication between Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever.
First of all, Unilever replaced the 7.5% donation pf pretax profits to a percentage of sales with a minimum of $1.1 million for 10 years following the acquisition.
Employees were required to learn new accounting and financial reporting procedures to enter and retrieve data through new software and computer systems.
Back office activities were consolidated with the Unilever staff in Wisconsin.
To improve the efficiency of Ben & Jerry’s manufacturing and distribution system, hundreds of jobs