Top shareholder backs Boohoo chiefs amid calls for founder to step down following sweatshop scandal
Boohoo’s billionaire founder has been backed by his largest independent investor.
MPs called for Mahmud Kamani to step down as an executive director after an explosive report found illegally low pay and life-threatening conditions for workers in its Leicester clothes factories.
Shadow health minister Liz Kendall wrote to major shareholders – Jupiter, Invesco and Baillie Gifford – saying they must remove Kamani and chief executive John Lyttle.
MPs called for Boohoo’s founder Mahmud Kamani to step down as an executive director after an explosive report found illegally low pay and life-threatening conditions for workers
Jupiter, which owns a 9.6 per cent stake, rejected her call, but warned bosses to improve governance.
In a letter seen by the Mail, Jupiter chief Nichola Pease said Jupiter expects problems to be fully addressed with ‘meaningful and permanent’ measures.
In August Kamani dismissed some of the allegations against it as ‘another lot of b******s’.
An independent probe found Kamani ‘covertly owns or controls many of the factories [in Leicester]’.
The Kamani family’s 18.6 per cent stake was worth £655million last night after the shares rose 5.5 per cent.