A group of US investors has sued the German clothing multinational Adidas for the economic damages suffered after the termination of the collaboration between the company and the US rapper Kanye West. The collaboration, which began in 2013 and lasted almost 10 years, concerned a line of shoes designed by the rapper himself and known as Yeezy, which had been enormously successful and led to a large increase in the company’s turnover. Adidas had terminated its collaboration with West in October 2022 following some of his public statements considered anti-Semitic and racist, with major economic consequences: the company had estimated losses of around 700 million euros due to the many Yeezy shoes already produced and remained unsold.
According to investors suing Adidas, the company knew of West’s positions well before the breakup and didn’t take enough steps to limit their financial losses. Specifically, the investors who have sued Adidas accuse it of having violated a series of norms transparency governing the relationship between a company and its investors. The complaint was made with a class action — a lawsuit brought collectively by a group of people to seek compensation for some kind of damage — filed last Friday in federal court in Oregon.
In the class action, the investors who sued Adidas they quote a series of racist or anti-Semitic comments made by West already in previous years, and internal discussions about them among some members of Adidas’ management. In part these discussions had been documented last November in an inquiry of the Wall Street Journalcited in the class action.