(Bloomberg) -- Ted Baker Plc said it appointed the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills LLP to conduct an independent external investigation into reports on the office conduct of founder Ray Kelvin.

The firm will report to a committee of the company’s non-executive directors that will be chaired by Sharon Baylay, a former Microsoft executive who joined the board in June, Ted Baker said in a statement Thursday. Bloomberg reported Wednesday the hiring of the law firm.

The appointment follows reports that Kelvin, who’s also chief executive officer, gave staff members unwanted hugs and asked female employees to sit on his knee. The CEO also pushed an executive against the wall in a glass meeting room in 2016, according to three people who witnessed the incident and asked not to be named.

The accusations have cast a cloud over a British retail success story with 544 stores worldwide. The shares have slumped by about one-fifth since reports of Kelvin’s hugging appeared over the weekend.

Kelvin is the largest shareholder in Ted Baker, with a stake of about 35 percent. The brand has grown from about 20 million pounds ($25.5 million) in sales in 1997, when the stock began trading, to 592 million pounds in the latest financial year.

Total retail sales including e-commerce rose 2.3 percent in the 16 weeks through Dec. 1, the company said Thursday.

To contact the reporters on this story: David Hellier in London at dhellier@bloomberg.net;Suzi Ring in London at sring5@bloomberg.net;William Mathis in London at wmathis2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, Marthe Fourcade

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