Vornado Realty Trust Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steven Roth resigned from J.C. Penney Co.’s board as his firm plans to sell its stake in the department-store chain.

The J.C. Penney stake will be exited in the “not-too-distant future,” Vornado said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company owns about 6.1 percent of J.C. Penney’s shares, according to the filing. That makes it the department-store chain’s sixth-largest shareholder, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Roth is following activist investor Bill Ackman in leaving J.C. Penney’s board and selling his stake in the retailer. J.C. Penney is working to rebound from its worst sales year in at least two decades after former CEO Ron Johnson’s plan to remake the department-store chain alienated shoppers.

J.C. Penney fell 0.9 percent to $13.79 at 3:17 p.m. in New York. Shares of the company, based in Plano, Texas, slid 29 percent this year through yesterday, compared with an 18 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.