LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- On Thursday, Vince Tyra said goodbye to the people he worked with at the headquarters of Gildan Activewear Inc. in Montreal, Canada. He made sure certain "formalities" were taken care of, he said. That evening, he boarded a plane home to Louisville.
The formalities included Tyra's resignation after less than six months as CEO of the $6 billion Canadian apparel maker — as well as the resignations of all 10 of the company's other board members, a rare circumstance in corporate governance.
By stepping aside from Gildan, Tyra and the board essentially waived the white flag in a bruising, months-long battle with Gildan investors who disagreed with the board's decision in December to oust former CEO Glenn Chamandy.
Those shareholders immediately restored Chamandy and remade the board with their allies.
"I'm a magnet for tough roles and helped stabilize the company while the activist fight carried on, but it was time to step aside," Tyra, 58, told WDRB News in a text message Friday.
The former University of Louisville athletics director had spent about a third of his time in Montreal the last few months, keeping a condo there, he said. Now he's home in Louisville and unsure what's next.
"Likely nothing if my wife has a vote," Tyra told WDRB. "Not sure about another operating role, but I love the mental stimulation of solving complex problems. Maybe I should just stick to board roles going forward."
Gildan Activewear is a global producer of inexpensive apparel such as T-shirts and owns brands such as American Apparel, Comfort Colors and GoldToe.
Tyra came to the company with a history of corporate leadership roles, including as president of Fruit of the Loom in the late 1990s and CEO of Broder Bros., a private equity-backed apparel distributor, from 2000-2005. In the Gildan Activewear's telling, Tyra "fixed the scandal-plagued" athletics department at U of L, where he followed longtime athletics director Tom Jurich in 2017 before resigning in 2021.
Tyra and the board decided to walk away ahead of a May 28 annual meeting during which Gildan's shareholders were scheduled to choose between the incumbents and an alternative slate of board members proposed by Browning West LP, the Los Angeles-based investment partnership that led the fight to restore Chamandy.
Helping the challengers' case, two large independent firms that advise institutional investors on corporate decisions, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, weighed in favor of restoring Chamandy.
"Tyra does not present a recent track record as an operator in the industry and Tyra's operating performance at Broder fails to establish him as a clearly superior option," Institutional Shareholder Services wrote in a May 17 report.
In a statement Thursday, Browning West said "preliminary results indicate that an overwhelming majority of shares have been voted in support of" its slate.
"While we are disappointed that the Board ignored the clear will of its shareholders for so many months and spent tens of millions of shareholder capital in an effort to defend its mistakes, we are nevertheless gratified that the current Board has decided to cease its campaign activities and pave the way for an orderly and conclusive leadership transition," Browning West's Usman Nabi and Peter Lee said in the statement.
Tyra, who started with Gildan on Jan. 15, was awarded $2 million in hiring bonuses of cash and stock units, according to a company filing. His base salary was $1.25 million and he had the potential to increase his annual pay by up to 8.5 times, based on performance, with stock awards.
