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The chief government and different senior leaders at Adidas mentioned the potential fallout from its relationship with Kanye West way back to 4 years in the past, in accordance with a report from The Wall Street Journal.
During a 2018 presentation to the Adidas government board, a gaggle of staff reportedly outlined the dangers that they confronted by interacting with West, who has legally modified his identify to Ye. The presentation included a lot of mitigation methods that included chopping ties with the Yeezy creator, the report mentioned.
But Adidas executives didn’t sever ties when these issues have been raised, and as a substitute continued to fulfill with Ye to try to maintain onto the partnership, which made practically $2 billion a 12 months for Adidas, or 10% of its income, in accordance with Morningstar analyst David Swartz. During one assembly in September of this 12 months, the report mentioned, Ye accused Adidas executives of stealing his designs and confirmed them a clip of an grownup video.
The German sportswear large formally terminated its partnership with Ye in October after the musician made a collection of offensive and antisemitic feedback.
“Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” the corporate mentioned in a press release. “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
A month later, Adidas introduced that it’s investigating accusations made by workers referring to Ye’s conduct after an nameless letter alleged years of abuse.
Ye’s alleged conduct was not new, in accordance with staff who spoke to the Journal. Some of them had raised issues about Ye to leaders and human sources at Adidas way back to 2018.
“It is currently not clear whether the accusations made in an anonymous letter are true,” Adidas mentioned in a press release Thursday. “However, we take these allegations very seriously and have taken the decision to launch an independent investigation of the matter immediately to address the allegations.”