Lululemon Misses Its Own Deadline to Let Chip Wilson Pick a Board Member
Four months after settling a proxy fight with its founder, Lululemon has quietly pushed back the October 1 deadline to seat the new director Wilson was promised, with no new date and no explanation offered.
Lululemon and founder Chip Wilson settled their proxy fight back in May, with the company agreeing to seat a new director who understands apparel and branding, subject to Wilson's sign-off. The deadline for naming that person was supposed to be October 1. Instead, both sides quietly agreed to extend it, with no new date attached and no public explanation for the delay.
That silence is doing a lot of work. Lululemon is already navigating a rough financial year under new CEO Heidi O'Neill, and a governance commitment slipping past its own deadline is not the kind of headline a retailer wants while it is trying to convince investors the turnaround plan is on track.
Nothing here confirms the talks have broken down, and delayed deadlines happen in board searches for mundane reasons all the time. But when the deadline was the product of a public fight with your own founder, silence reads louder than it would anywhere else.
Source: Bloomberg
Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →
