Paris (awp/afp) – The French group of casinos and luxury hotels Barrière announced Thursday in a press release that it was selling its entire stake in the catering company Moma Holding to the holding company of its creator Benjamin Patou, six years after its entry into the capital.
This 48.59% stake acquired in early 2016 made Barrière the second largest shareholder of Moma Group, which today operates around thirty venues, restaurants and event halls, mainly located in Paris, but also in Lyon, St Tropez. , St Barthelemy or Doha.
The amount of the transaction is not made public.
“This decision allows the hospitality group specializing in festive and premium catering created by Benjamin Patou to hold 70% of the company he founded in 1997 through his family holding company”, indicates Barrière, which operates 32 casinos, a games club, 18 hotels – mostly 5 stars and a palace – and more than 140 restaurants and bars, including Fouquet’s in Paris.
Born in 1997, Moma Group has grown with the support of Barrière and today includes the restaurants Mimosa -chef Jean-François Piège’s table at the Hôtel de la Marine-, Lapérouse, Deepfish or Forest in Paris, Manko and Cipriani in St Tropez in particular. The company has opened 17 new places since the entry into the capital of the casino owner, specifies the latter.
Moma Group now has 1,400 employees and is aiming for a turnover of 140 million euros this year, said a spokeswoman.
The CEO of Barrière Dominique Desseigne, quoted by the press release, said he wished “the best for all development projects” from Benjamin Patou, “a dynamic entrepreneur and a free spirit”.
For his part, the president of Moma Group “thanks the Barrière teams and its president for this support in a complex and difficult period for all players in the catering industry”.
The recent strategic orientations taken by Moma Group, with the opening of vast places dedicated to catering, developed in partnership with the group of shopping centers Unibail-Rodamco, had moved away from the core business of the Barrière group, which specializes in luxury hotels, according to a source familiar with the matter.
After having opened “Food Society” in Lyon in June 2020, which aims to be the “largest food hall in Europe”, a second place of the same type should see the light of day in May 2022 in Paris and bring together 15 restaurants and two bars in a space of 5,300 m2, in the district of La Gaieté Montparnasse.
afp/buc