But to do so, Lew needs to garner the support of Myer’s large retail shareholder base. The smattering of institutional shareholders left on the register have been largely unsupportive of him to date.

And nothing will buy the favour of small shareholders like the reinstatement of a dividend.

Nothing will buy the favour of small shareholders like the reinstatement of a dividend.

Thus, Lew has a number of options.

If he wants to maintain the rage against the Myer board, he can buy more stock and increase his Myer stake by 3 percentage points every six months (the allowable amount under Corporations law), then re-mount his board campaign in a year’s time with enhanced numerical firepower.

He can sit on his current shareholding, wait on the sidelines and take pot shots at the board if signs emerge that Myer’s recovery plan is hitting snags.

There is always the option of making a full takeover offer - but given Lew’s previously stated disinclination this seems unlikely. Equally unlikely is the prospect of the retail billionaire selling out at a loss.

The final option is to get behind Myer’s current governance team and call a truce.

Signs of success

All that said, Myer has a long way to go before its transformation to a successful retailer is complete.

But the strategy employed by chief executive John King is showing signs of success. The profit in the six months to the end of January was up 55 per cent, after stripping out the JobKeeper payments the company received in the previous corresponding period.

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And at various times during this time, some of its stores were closed due to COVID. The latest reporting period also included late December and January, when shops were open but the public was too nervous about the Omicron variant to leave their homes.

Sales were up 8.5 per cent over the six months, and the company said that in the first five weeks since the end of January that growth has accelerated to 15.2 per cent.

All this is encouraging.

Taking a longer-term view, Myer is unlikely to ever return to its former glory - the golden days when large department stores were the grand dames of retailing.

It is now a relatively small company by ASX standards, and even if its market capitalisation doubled it would still come in below the $1 billion mark.

The challenge King has embarked on is focused around reducing the company’s physical store footprint and increasing its online presence - which involves enhancing its distribution centres to lower the costs of working in an omnichannel retail world.

The other challenge is tailoring products to meet customer wants - but that is every retailer’s challenge.

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