Samsonite chief resigns under cloud
It sounds obvious, but Samsonite has a lot of baggage.
The 108-year-old maker of suitcases and bags was once the pre-eminent U.S. name when it came to life on the go. Then, after financial disappointments and decades of shifting ownership, Samsonite took its shares public in the Chinese city of Hong Kong, seeking to capitalize on Asia’s growing legions of well-heeled travelers.
Its troubles are not over. The company’s top executive stepped down this week after being accused by a short-selling investor of falsely claiming to have a doctoral degree.
Samsonite said Friday it had accurately represented the academic credentials of the executive, Ramesh Tainwala, ever since going public in Hong Kong in 2011. Still, the company said that it took the allegations “seriously” and that Tainwala would be replaced immediately by its finance chief, Kyle Gendreau.
In a report published May 24, an activist investment firm called Blue Orca Capital accused Samsonite of using questionable accounting practices to inflate its earnings and profits. The report said that entities controlled by Tainwala and his family did business with Samsonite in ways that it said raised eyebrows.
Blue Orca also wrote that Tainwala was referred to as “Dr. Ramesh Tainwala” in a few U.S. and Indian regulatory documents. But when Blue Orca contacted the institution from which Tainwala, according to some biographical sources, received a doctorate, the institution said he had not obtained a degree.
Samsonite called the report “one-sided and misleading.”