One of the two offers in the running to take over the equipment supplier in difficulty The sports rooster, supported by Xavier Niel and Teddy Riner, was “deliberately hampered” and “weakened”, denounce his lawyers who ask for “a reopening of the debates”.
The sportsman’s rooster, which equipped the French delegation during the Paris Olympic Games last summer and has nearly 300 employees in France, was placed in receivership last November. Two offers are in the running for its takeover, the Paris economic affairs court having to render its decision on Friday.
One of the two offers is carried by the Franco-Swiss businessman Dan Mamane, while the second emanates from a consortium bringing together the French billionaire Xavier Niel, the judoka Teddy Riner, the investment company Neopar, the American group Iconix (Lee Cooper, Umbro) as well as the current boss of Airesis, mother house of the sports coq, Marc-Henri Beausure, and the family Camuset, founder of the brand.
A “stunned” process
In a letter of five pages dated June 26 and addressed to the President of the Court as well as to the Prosecutor of the Republic of Paris – that AFP has obtained – the business law firm August Debouzy “requests the reopening of debates in the context of the examination of recovery plan projects, in that the process followed to date has been, in multiple respects, vitiated by breaches of fundamental principles collective ”.
“It appears that the plan presented by the consortium composed of Iconix, Neopar, Airesis and their partners, although having been regularly transmitted within the prescribed deadlines, was deliberately hampered, weakened, then ousted from the examination process” affirms the cabinet, which denounces a “methodical obstruction of judicial administrators”.
The judicial administrators implicated
According to August DEBOUZY, “the plan presented by the consortium was not excluded because of its economic or legal characteristics, but because the judicial administrators, from the first weeks of the procedure, decided to make the plan supported by Mr. Mamane their own plan”.
According to its recovery project made public in May, the consortium is 51 % increased by the investment company Neopar, specialist in “business reversal” and owned by the breast family; At 26.5 % by investors, while the American group Iconix occurs up to 22.5 %.
The consortium had told AFP that it intended to bring a total of 60 million euros, which would be “immediately injected” into the company.
