One of Gildan Activewear Inc.’s largest shareholders says the increasingly bitter feud between the company’s board of directors and its former CEO “never should have ended” in such dramatic fashion.

Evan J. Mancer, president and chief investment officer of Winnipeg-based Cardinal Capital Management, said his firm is one of a number of high-profile shareholders who would like to see Gildan’s ousted CEO and co-founder Glenn Chamandy reinstated.

“I'm not sure how they got to this… I think there's probably more ego involved than logic,” Mancer told BNN Bloomberg in a television interview Friday morning.

“I don't know who started it, between the board and (Chamandy); founders can be very passionate about their companies… but it never should have ended like this.”

Chamandy had served as head of the Montreal-based company for nearly 20 years before he was dismissed by Gildan’s board late last year and replaced by former Fruit of the Loom executive, Vince Tyra.

The board said at the time that they had lost faith in Chamandy’s ability to deliver long-term strategic objectives, but Chamandy maintains he was fired without cause, and said he had the backing of the company’s management team.

Mancer, whose firm is estimated to be Gildan’s twelfth largest shareholder, said he thinks Gildan was “extremely well managed” under Chamandy’s leadership, and that his past moves have set the company up for future success.

“It's extremely rare that a board would ever fire a successful CEO… even if there's some ego involved, at the end of the day, the job of the board is really to keep your successful CEO, not to let them go,” he said.

Activist investor Browning West

U.S. investment firm Browning West has been the most outspoken Gildan shareholder that wants to see Chamandy reinstated as CEO, and the firm has also said it will seek to replace eight of the 11 directors on Gildan’s board.

Browning West’s latest move came earlier this week when the firm filed a lawsuit against Gildan and its board to ensure it holds its scheduled annual meeting in May "without delay and with the oversight of an independent chair” in order to ensure a leadership vote is held.

Mancer said that while he initially only wanted Chamandy reinstated, he can’t see how he and the board that ousted him could work together again, and said that Browning West’s proposed change of directors is “probably the only solution.”

“I think Browning West actually did a really good job with this new slate of directors that they're proposing,” he added.

“They're all industry heavyweights for one, but also, there's two or three of them that have got a lot of experience with succession, having worked with founders in the past, and obviously having come through what we just came through, that's very much needed at Gildan.”