A new brand in the clothing industry finds itself in turmoil. Bordeaux businessman Michel Ohayon will place the twenty-six Galeries Lafayette stores he controls in France in receivership “to protect them from any attack”he announced in a newspaper interview South Westpublished on Friday 17 February.
“Their situation is healthy”assured the entrepreneur, whose business empire is in turmoil, with the liquidation of the Camaïeu brand in September and the placement in receivership of the Go Sport group in January.
This week, the Bordeaux Commercial Court has already placed in receivership, at its request, the main holding company of Michel Ohayon, Financière immobilière bordelaise (FIB), a company with which he has built a vast commercial and hotel empire currently in difficulty. .
Coming out of silence for the first time since the beginning of the crisis which earned him many criticisms, Mr. Ohayon took up his own defense in the columns of the newspaper. “Since the failure [de sa reprise de Camaïeu en 2018], I’ve heard everything regarding me but no, I’m not a commercial court jackal! »declares the businessman, who claims to have injected “two and a half times more” money in the business than promised, and “everything to save jobs” – more than 2,000 employees paid the price.
The future of Go Sport is dark
The placement in receivership of the FIB must allow “to continue the activity” et “prepare the best terms for the repayment of creditors and companies”continued Mr. Ohayon, whose strategy aims to “reduce the perimeter of the company”by selling assets, to enable “a very strong deleveraging”. “FIB is solid, we have assets that are among the most beautiful in France”he assured.
Asked regarding the future of Go Sport, Michel Ohayon, on the other hand, was pessimistic regarding the outcome of the receivership proceedings opened by the Grenoble commercial court, believing that the sign would be “sold before”. “While the company was going to make its first profits in seventeen years in 2023, the employees did not trust the managers and demanded that the company be placed under court protection”lamented the businessman, for whom this “will cause social damage and lead to the same Gap movement” while“a backup would have sufficed”.
