Around 100 “senior executives and managers” of fashion group SMCP (Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot), including founders Evelyne and Ilan Chétrite and Judith Milgrom, are now holding a 10.3% stake in the group following a preferred shares conversion, according to a press release issued on Friday.

Between 2016 and 2017, SMCP, which also owns menswear label Fursac, “exceptionally issued” nearly 1.3 million “preferred shares” with a nominal value of €1.10 each, to 98 of the group’s senior executives and managers, as the group has stated in a press release.

Among the beneficiaries were Evelyne and Ilan Chétrite, and Judith Milgrom, the group’s “founders and managing directors.”

These shares “could be converted by their beneficiaries” into just over 5 million common shares on January 1 of each year from January 1, 2019 to January 1, 2025.

SMCP’s share price stood at €3.66 when market trading opened on January 2.

The group’s stock now consists of 78,326,898 common shares. “Updated information on the related voting rights will be published on the company’s website on January 6,” said SMCP.

Following this operation, “SMCP’s founders and executives are now holding 10.3% of the group’s capital and 14.7% of voting rights,” but the group envisages that “the holders of common shares resulting from the conversion (…) will go on to sell these common shares before December 31 2025, given the applicable tax regime.”

SMCP’s equity was the subject of a legal tussle between the group’s former majority shareholder European TopSoho, owned by Chinese group Shandong Ruyi, and its creditors, which have become SMCP’s majority shareholders.

Through the GLAS trustee, the creditors are now holding a 28.8% stake in SMCP. They have also challenged the 2021 sale of a 15.9% stake to a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

In early September, the British courts confirmed the sale is null and void, prompting SMCP to state that GLAS intends to “demand the forced restitution” of this stake, held in Singapore.