Kohl’s faces more leadership challenges from activist investors

Yahoo Finance anchors discuss reports that an activist investor has requested the removal of Kohl's chair and CEO.

Video transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JULIE HYMAN: An activist investor group Ancora Holdings-- I didn't have that much to say about that anyway-- which has a 2 and 1/2% stake in the retailer sent a letter to the board today asking for the replacement of CEO Michelle Gass and chairman Peter Bonaparte. That's according to a letter that we have.

It says, "Kohl's needs new leadership with demonstrated experience in cost containment margin expansion product cattle--" all right, let's leave that aside for a moment. Basically, what they're saying here, they say that the leadership has destroyed billions of dollars in equity value and painted the company into a corner.

And the letter says that they did that by rejecting the takeover attempts for Kohl's. And that Gass is not the right person. That she's a talented leader but she's not the right person to lead Kohl's during this period of time. The company's been pretty resistant to all of this. So I don't know what's gonna change now, even with this letter.

BRAD SMITH: No, and highly unlikely that anything will really change as a result of it. But it's a larger question, I think, in the executive management that we've seen on-- and the scrutiny around retail names, specifically, right now. Those who-- and it's largely the retail names that have the largest square footage that have been behemoths either in URL size or in their name and stature for years that are getting that scrutiny.

JULIE HYMAN: All right, we got to leave it there.