<snip>
Unilever said that under terms of the deal, Perry Odak, Ben & Jerry's chief executive, will have financial and operational control of the company while Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield will be responsible for "the social mission and brand integrity." Ben & Jerry's would continue to engage in "critical, global economic social missions," Unilever said.
Toward that end, Ben & Jerry's negotiated some unusual conditions. Among them, Unilever must continue the company's charitable mission, including buying milk from Vermont dairy farmers at above-market prices and donating 7.5% of Ben & Jerry's pretax profit to charity. And Unilever will provide $5 million to Mr. Cohen to launch a venture-capital fund to invest in low-income communities.
Mr. Odak said the sale preserved "the heart and soul" of the company. He said Unilever had even agreed to pay the legal fees of Ben & Jerry's board members to pursue suits against Unilever if the big company doesn't live up to the social mission.
"These are not just promises," Mr. Odak said. "They are guarantees."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB955522850788928066<snip>
In announcing the deal, which the board approved at 2 a.m., both companies said that Ben & Jerry's would continue as it always had and that
Unilever, which is based in the Netherlands, would commit 7.5 percent of Ben & Jerry's profits to a foundation and agree not to reduce jobs or alter the way the ice cream is made. Unilever will also contribute $5 million to the foundation, create a $5 million fund to help minority-owned businesses and others in poor neighborhoods and distribute $5 million to employees in six months, said Perry D. Odak, chief executive of Ben & Jerry's.
In addition, Mr. Cohen will work on evaluating Unilever's involvement in activities like protecting the environment. A bit of Ben & Jerry's attitude, in short, is being transferred to a $45 billion company, affirming the principles that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield have advocated since they started their company in a Vermont gas station in 1978.
''While I would have preferred for Ben & Jerry's to remain independent, I'm excited about this next chapter,'' Mr. Cohen said in a statement, which included lyrics from the Grateful Dead song ''Scarlet Begonias'': ''Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.''
<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/13/business/ben-jerry-s-to-unilever-with-attitude.htmlSold up but not sold out, Ben and Jerry are still the poster boys for fair trade
<snip>
Cohen describes the move to Fairtrade as "certainly the best thing that Ben & Jerry's has ever done since the acquisition. I think it is the harbinger that the day of first-world corporations making huge profits off the exploitation of the third world is over.
<snip>
The pair say chose Britain to launch the Fairtrade initiative partly because Europe has gone further in adopting the idea. The old world, Cohen says, "is a lot more civilised, as evidenced by things like how advanced Fairtrade is here and how behind the US is. The US excels at maximising profits and exporting weapons."
<snip>
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/apr/04/ben-jerrys-fairtrade-ethical-business
= new reply since forum marked as read
:-P 
