What’s going on with Le Coq Sportif? The singing gallinaceous sports brand, official supplier to the French Olympic and Paralympic Team for Paris 2024, placed in receivership last November, is the subject of two takeover bids. However, after a number of twists and turns in the timetable, a decision was expected on July 4, but on Monday one of the consortiums carrying one of the takeover bids denounced the way it had been treated. According to its lawyers, the bid from the team comprising the American group Iconix and Xavier Niel, and backed by French judo champion Teddy Riner, was “deliberately hindered” and “weakened.” With a decision expected from the Paris Business Court only a few days away, its lawyers are calling for “a reopening of the proceedings.”
The court is due to take a decision in a particularly electric climate surrounding a company that remains a modest player in world sport. The brand is still 75% owned by the Swiss company Airesis, which acquired it 20 years ago and has yet to unveil its annual results for 2024. At the end of the first half of 2024, Le Coq recorded sales of 82 million euros, up 30%, for a net loss of 18 million euros. In 2023, total sales were 121 million euros, with a loss of 28 million euros.
Yet the brand, which employs some 300 people and has a workshop in Romilly sur Seine near Troyes, is far more powerful than its sales would suggest, particularly in France. As a result, the French Ministry of the Economy has been keeping a close eye on the case, attracting a number of key players to the takeover. Since mid-May, both parties have been making a series of discreet announcements in an attempt to tip the balance in their favor.
The most likely bid is that of Franco-Swiss businessman Dan Mamane. Born in Toulon, the entrepreneur, as described in his profile in the Swiss media outlet Le Temps, moved to Switzerland at the age of 18 and graduated from HEC Lausanne. The Vaud-born entrepreneur built up his fortune in the electronics trade with the creation of his Powerdata group. He moved into retail in 2021, with the takeover and turnaround of Conforama Suisse, and earlier this year acquired the Ogier ski brand. At his side is former Fusalp CEO Alexandre Fauvet. Les Echos reports that Cédric Meston, head of Tupperware France, may also join the project. Although the details are not known, the fact that he would maintain jobs at the group’s head office in Troyes would be a factor, as would the issue of receivables, which would limit the impact on local authority finances.
The second offer came from a consortium comprising French billionaire Xavier Niel, judoka Teddy Riner, investment company Neopar, American group Iconix, as well as the current boss of Airesis, parent company of Le Coq Sportif, Marc-Henri Beausire, and the Camuset family, founders of the brand.
In a five-page letter dated June 26 and addressed to the president of the court and the Paris public prosecutor – which AFP has obtained – the business law firm August Debouzy “requests the reopening of the debates within the framework of the examination of the draft recovery plans, in that the process followed to date has, in many respects, been vitiated by breaches of the fundamental principles governing collective proceedings.”
“It appears that the plan presented by the consortium made up of Iconix, Neopar, Airesis and their partners, despite having been duly submitted within the prescribed deadlines, has been deliberately hindered, weakened and then effectively ousted from the examination process,” asserts the firm, which denounces a “methodical obstruction by the court-appointed administrators.”
According to August Debouzy, “the plan presented by the consortium was not rejected because of its economic or legal characteristics, but because the court-appointed administrators decided, from the very first weeks of the procedure, to make the plan supported by Mr. Mamane their own plan.”
According to the takeover plan made public in May, the consortium is 51% owned by Neopar, an investment company specializing in “company turnarounds” and owned by the Poitrinal family, 26.5% by investors, and 22.5% by the American group Iconix.
The consortium had told AFP that it planned to contribute a total of 60 million euros, which would be “injected immediately” into the company.
With AFP
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