Gildan says Chamandy had no intention of abiding by agreed succession plan

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Gildan Activewear and the Board’s Committee Chairs issued an open letter to shareholders, which read in part, “We are writing to you today to clarify the record as to why the directors of Gildan recently came to the unanimous decision to remove Glenn Chamandy as CEO and to outline the path forward under our new CEO Vince Tyra. We give Mr. Chamandy all the credit he rightly deserves for co-founding Gildan Activewear and respect that he built it into a successful public company. Throughout much of his 20-year tenure as CEO he drove exceptional growth and value creation. Over the last four years, however, Mr. Chamandy has struggled to find additional avenues of long-term organic growth. Over the last two years, the Board’s trust and confidence in Mr. Chamandy eroded gradually as we worked to hold him accountable for delivering the next chapter of the company’s long-term growth strategy as well as the development of his people. It is the Board’s view that it was time to explore searching for a leader who could better discharge these critical responsibilities for the future. The Board’s decision to hire a new CEO is based on our joint responsibility to see that Gildan is well positioned for future success. The business has grown in scale and complexity and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead call for a new leader with new ideas and different skills. The Board has had a robust succession process underway for nearly two years. It was planned, deliberate and professionally run, the exact way that a responsible public company should approach succession. The Board and Mr. Chamandy agreed to this formal three-year CEO succession plan in December 2021. In January 2022, we hired a leading executive search firm to begin the process of conducting a search for a new CEO, including both internal and external candidates. By September 2023, the search had narrowed to a shortlist of candidates and Vince Tyra was selected by the Board as CEO on December 10, 2023. And while Mr. Chamandy had agreed to follow the original succession timeline, he later worked to entrench himself as CEO. The most glaring example of that was his October 2023 proposal to the Board that we should actively pursue, within weeks, high-risk and highly dilutive multi-billion-dollar acquisitions that would shift Gildan away from its core area of manufacturing experience. In addition, his request was to stay on as CEO for several more years to implement such plan. If the Board did not approve his timing, he told us repeatedly that he would leave the company in the near-term and sell all of his shares. We now know that Mr. Chamandy had no intention of abiding by the agreed succession plan…Vince is the right person to lead Gildan to the next stage of its evolution and we look forward to his engaging with our stakeholders. We are also proud that Chris Shackelton, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Coliseum Capital Management, has accepted our invitation to join our Board. Coliseum has committed to support Gildan’s Board and to grow its position with the hope of becoming Gildan’s largest shareholder.”