Corporate America is retreating from stated values faster than at any point in a generation, and shareholders are starting to push back. Last week, BP shareholders confronted management at the company’s annual meeting over its retreat from climate commitments. Target’s stock fell 17% and same-store sales dropped after the company walked back its DEI commitments while Costco shareholders rejected an anti-DEI proposal by a 98% vote and watched their company’s sales keep growing. Customers and investors are noticing when companies abandon what made them worth buying in the first place.
Now ice cream is the latest victim of corporate war on social responsibility. Spun out of Unilever four months ago, the world’s newest and largest ice cream conglomerate, The Magnum Ice Cream Company, made a promise to shareholders to manage its portfolio of brands responsibly. It is not keeping that promise. Magnum owns well-known brands like Breyers, Klondike, Talenti and, notably, Ben & Jerry’s — which has been driving headlines during Magnum’s first quarter as a publicly traded company. Co-founder Jerry Greenfield resigned in protest after 47 years. The independent board of directors and the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation have sued Magnum in federal court, alleging breach of contract and their former board chair filed a defamation case of her own in California. In April, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen rebranded a four-decade tradition as “Free The Cone Day,” called on Magnum to sell the company, and urged consumers to rethink buying Magnum bars until it does. Magnum’s first shareholder meeting as a public company is May 7 and shares are trading near a 52-week low. Management has yet to offer a convincing answer to the simplest question its investors may ask: what is the plan?
What Ben & Jerry’s Actually Built
Before we get to Magnum’s problem, it is worth being precise about what is being destroyed. Two guys, $12,000, a converted gas station in Vermont in 1978, and a bet that a company could make great products and stand for something at the same time. They didn’t just build a brand. They helped inspire a generation of founders to prove that purpose and profit can go hand in hand.
Their experiment worked. Ben & Jerry’s helped restore voting rights to more than 1.5 million disenfranchised people in Florida. They improved conditions for more than 200 farm laborers across the Northeast. They successfully advocated for legislation that reduced child poverty, including Head Start and CHIP. Through the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the company invested over $70 million into local organizing, housing, immigrant rights, and democracy groups across America. This is not a record of good intentions. It is a record of measurable impact built by a company that treated justice as a core business function, not a side project.
That model is now being dismantled. Magnum and Unilever executives removed members of the independent board established to protect the social mission, withheld funding from the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, and suppressed the brand’s voice on precisely the issues it was built to address — from Palestine to Indigenous rights to racial justice — when speaking up became inconvenient. A brand millions of Americans grew up trusting is being hollowed out from the inside.
The Business Case They’re Ignoring
Magnum and Unilever executives may believe stripping Ben & Jerry’s of its mission is a sound business decision. The evidence says otherwise. A 2023 study by Jump Associates found that over a 20-year period, purpose-driven companies delivered market returns higher than peers and up to five times greater than the S&P 500. Ben & Jerry’s is one of the clearest examples of this trend.
Our companies followed similar playbooks — and demonstrate that business can do well by doing good. Dr. Bronner’s grew from $4 million in revenue in 1998 to $250 million in 2025, while spending very little on traditional advertising because the mission was the marketing. Patagonia’s sales more than quadrupled over the last twenty years — from $240 million to nearly $1.5 billion — while the company contributed more than $240 million to environmental nonprofits through its commitment to 1% for the Planet. Patagonia’s nonprofit owner, Holdfast Collective, has distributed more than $210 million since 2022 to fight the climate crisis.
What began as bad PR is becoming bad business. David Stever, a 35-year Ben & Jerry’s veteran pushed out as CEO by Unilever last year, was just named CEO of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, a rival premium brand and certified B Corp. More than 130,000 people have signed a petition urging Magnum to sell the company to values-aligned investors. Magnum stock is down roughly 25% from its February high and it has become a popular short-sell bet for European traders. These are the consequences of Unilever and Magnum deciding that the voice and soul of a beloved American brand are expendable.
What Shareholders Should Do With This Moment
Corporations and their shareholders have a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer found that for the first time in its 26-year history, business is viewed as more ethical than government, media and NGOs. Founders and CEOs have more credibility right now than the institutions around them. The question is what they do with it.
Every business leader now faces a straightforward question: do we need more cutthroat capitalism, or less? Some leaders have spent decades fighting the idea that their companies should care about workers, communities, and the environment. Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Dr. Bronner’s have spent decades doing the opposite — proving that companies can do business differently. Capitalism does not have to only be about the rich getting richer. Business works best when it puts people, planet, and purpose first.
The world wants more companies like Ben & Jerry’s. Magnum should set them free to do what they do best.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
This column has been updated to correct that Magnum shares are trading near, not at, a 52-week low. The lowest point of the last 52 weeks was on April 29 and as of May 7, shares were down 2.14% over the past year.
