Though he’ll be staying on as chairman and creative director, Ralph Lauren’s decision to step down as CEO of his eponymous fashion company must have been a tough one for him to make, as he’s been running the place for nearly half a century. But it came with a nice consolation: His personal holdings of Class A shares in the company gained more than $6 million in value overnight, according to FactSet.
Lauren will be relinquishing day-to-day control of the brand to veteran retailing executive Stefan Larsson, who helped Swedish fast-fashion chain H&M achieve terrific sales growth, and went on to do the same for Gap Inc.’s Old Navy.
Loyal consumers of the Ralph Lauren label might be feeling wistful about the management change, but investors seem perfectly happy with the move, which comes amid slowing sales growth for the label and efforts to restructure the company. Shares of Ralph Lauren were up nearly 13% in late morning trading in New York.