Lululemon Athletica Inc.'s law firm has signed off on a plan that would allow the company's founder Dennis “Chip” Wilson to sell his family’s remaining 14 percent stake in the company, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).
The filing included a June 10 letter to Lululemon in which the Seattle law firm DLA Piper confirmed that the plan, which was laid out in an S-3 registration statement filed with the SEC in 2013, complied with corporate laws of the state of Delaware. The S-3 governs how Wilson would be able to sell his family's 20,109,131 remaining shares of the company, if he chooses to do so. Those shares were worth about $1.2 billion as of June 11.
Wilson sold half his stake in Lululemon in August 2014 to settle a dispute with the company that erupted into a proxy fight last summer, when Wilson voted against the re-election of the company’s chairman and another director.
In early May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Lululemon's board of directors began excluding Wilson from some meetings in December 2014 due to concerns that Kit & Ace, an activewear company started by his wife, was competing with Lululemon. Wilson has since resigned from the Lululemon board.
“The prospectus supplement filed by lululemon simply enables Chip Wilson to sell his shares in the future, if he chooses to do so, on the same basis as any other stockholder,” a spokesman for Wilson said June 11.
