Gildan Activewear board of directors issues letter to shareholders

The Board of Directors of Gildan Activewear issued an open letter to shareholders. “In response to Browning West’s December 29, 2023 letter articulating its misguided campaign to reinstall Glenn Chamandy as CEO of Gildan Activewear, the Board of Directors is sharing further information on recent events. We would have preferred to keep many of these details private, but the public misinformation tactics by Chamandy and Browning West demand a public response. The Board is unanimous in its conviction that retaining Mr. Chamandy as CEO would have jeopardized the future of Gildan and destroyed shareholder value. Mr. Chamandy has attempted to frame this as a dispute over the Board’s CEO succession process. That is not what this is about. This is about the future of Gildan. The Board had gradually lost trust and confidence in Mr. Chamandy. It had become clear that he had no credible long-term strategy and no vision for the future… Over the last few years Mr. Chamandy struggled to scale an increasingly complex organization… Mr. Chamandy was chief executive for 20 years, and, in his last few years he gradually became more disengaged as CEO as he increasingly focused on outside personal pursuits including the development of a golf resort in Barbados… In December 2021, the Board and Mr. Chamandy agreed to an orderly 3-year succession plan. By the fall of 2023, however, Mr. Chamandy moved to entrench himself as CEO. As the search for a new CEO advanced according to the process and timeline agreed upon with Mr. Chamandy, he presented the Board with a plan to make risky and highly dilutive multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, arguing that he would then need to remain as CEO for several more years to oversee the integration. This was not, as Mr. Chamandy now claims, a routine annual strategy exercise. This was a formal strategy proposal presented as Mr. Chamandy’s best idea for addressing what he viewed as Gildan’s limited growth potential… Recently, the Board has learned of new information regarding behaviors by Mr. Chamandy that took place around the time of his departure and are inconsistent with that of a senior executive. Mr. Chamandy recorded a private and confidential phone call on November 24, 2023 with the Chair of the Board without the Chair’s knowledge. Upon his departure he also violated company policies related to the safeguarding of corporate information. The Board of Directors is currently investigating these and other matters, including Mr. Chamandy’s engagement with certain shareholders prior to his termination… Mr. Chamandy has spent weeks telling a false and misleading story about recent events at Gildan. Many well-intentioned investors have bought into that false story. The Board will continue to patiently, yet firmly, set the record straight. We look forward to continuing our conversations with shareholders.”