Charismatic clothing entrepreneur Julian Dunkerton has succeeded in his bid to wrest back control of embattled fashion brand Superdry (SDRY).
Dunkerton will now look to arrest the steep trading decline at the jackets-to-sweatshirts seller that has been his life’s work, while the incumbent CEO Euan Sutherland is sure to be shown the door.
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Superdry’s co-founders and significant shareholders Dunkerton and James Holder have been pressing for the election of Dunkerton and Boohoo (BOO:AIM) chairman Peter Williams as directors and all eyes were on today’s general meeting of shareholders.
The results reveal a stunning win for Dunkerton, albeit by the narrowest of margins.
Shareholders voted 50.75% in favour of Dunkerton’s appointment as a director, with 49.25% of the votes cast against.
This is also a banner day for Peter Williams; he’ll be appointed as a director, having secured 50.74% of the votes and with 49.26% of the votes cast against.
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Dunkerton has seen the value of his stake shrivel following a slew of profit warnings from Superdry and, as he informed Shares here, he is desperate to return to the fold and correct what he insists has been a fundamentally flawed strategy pursued by Sutherland.
The passionate ‘Remainer’ was CEO until 2014 before switching to the role of brand director.
He left Superdry completely in March 2018 in order to devote more time to other interests, but he was angered by a change of strategy at the business he spent years building and launched a campaign to ‘Save Superdry’.
Last month, the board came out fighting, insisting its strategy was working, arguing Dunkerton’s return would have ‘damaging business impacts’ and that he had ‘no support’ from institutional shareholders. The latter assertion was clearly wide of the mark.
