DENIS CHARLET / AFP
Michel Ohayon, here in Tourcoing, September 28, 2022.
JUSTICE – Michel Ohayon has been talking regarding him a lot lately. A jack-of-all-trades but silent businessman, aged 61, he has built a real estate and commercial empire from Bordeaux, weakened by the recent Camaïeu fiasco and the current concerns of Go Sport employees.
On Friday February 17, he spoke in a rare interview, pour South Westin which he notably announced that he was going to place the 26 Galeries Lafayette stores he controls in France in recovery. “To protect them from any attack”he said, adding that their situation was “healthy”.
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This Saturday, February 18, a spokesperson for the businessman had to rectify: these stores will in fact be placed under the safeguard of the commercial court, and not placed in receivership.
” There was a mistake (…). There is no placement in receivership because was filed yesterday morning (Friday, editor’s note) a request for placement in safeguard proceedings with the Bordeaux Commercial Court. There is no cessation of payment”the spokesman told AFP.
Michel Ohayon owns, through the company Hermione Retail, around twenty Galeries Lafayette department stores acquired from the group in 2018. They employ some 750 people in total in cities such as Bayonne, Cannes, Niort and Rouen. The elected staff of the Galleries had exercised their right to alert in December and walkouts took place this week in stores.
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The Casablanca-born businessman’s empire has been faltering for a few months, to the point that it seems to be collapsing like a house of cards.
104th fortune of France
The brutal liquidation of Camaïeu in September in the North has already left some 2,600 employees on the floor and the Grenoble commercial court placed in receivership, in January, another brand controlled by Michel Ohayon, Go Sport, which employs more of 2,000 people.
The latter has appealed the decision but he believes that Go Sport will be “sold before” the outcome of the procedure, dragging the Gap brand in its wake and with “social coffers”.
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“We destabilized Go Sport because of Camaïeu. While the company was going to make its first profits in 17 years in 2023, the employees did not trust the leaders (…) It is an error which will cause social damage and lead to the same Gap movement. A backup would have sufficed”comments Michel Ohayon, on the defensive.
“They say that I am a specialist in redemptions at 1 euro… I should point out in passing that HPB (the Hermione company, People & Brands, editor’s note) has injected 200 million euros of equity into our trading activities”he adds in the columns of the newspaper.
The serial investor, 104th fortune in France with 1.1 billion euros in the magazine’s latest ranking Challengescomes out of its silence as the Bordeaux Commercial Court also placed in receivership on Wednesday – at its request – its main holding company, Financière immobilière bordelaise (FIB).
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It is with this company that this son of a fabric merchant, who arrived in Gironde as a child from Morocco, built a vast commercial and real estate empire from the 1980s. This also includes, among other assets, the brand of toys La Grande Récré and the Legal cafés, as well as several palaces: the Grand Hôtel de Bordeaux, the Sheraton at Roissy airport and the Waldorf Astoria Trianon Palace at Versailles.
A debt of 477 million euros
The three subsidiaries of the FIB owners of these establishments had been placed in receivership at the end of January, summoned before the Commercial Court of Bordeaux by their main creditor, Bank of China, for failing to have reimbursed more than 200 million euros in loans. .
Other companies in the Ohayon galaxy, which has a myriad of them, were once more this week according to South West – Gambetta Revival, Hermione Real Estate et Hermione Stores.
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The latest accounts published by the FIB, corresponding to its 2020 financial year, showed a loss of 31 million euros and a debt of 477 million euros.
His placement in receivership – “under the protection of the court”insists Michel Ohayon – must allow, according to him, “to continue the activity” and of “prepare the best terms for the repayment of creditors and companies”. The businessman wants “reduce the perimeter of the company” to engage “a very strong deleveraging”.
“FIB is solid, we have assets that are among the finest in France. We have liquidity problems and not solvency problems (…) We will not sell anything »concludes Michel Ohayon.
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In 2019, he had defended in an interview, granted to the magazine Forbesthe figure of the entrepreneur who “has never been admired or praised” in France, according to him, and who “now crystallizes a lot of passions, tensions”.
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