Circet takes over Scopelec and half of its employees at the expense of the employees’ project

The Circet company was chosen to take over the majority of Scopelec’s activities and save 1,049 employees out of the 2,300 of the first and oldest French cooperative group, to the detriment of the Newscope takeover project carried out by its employees.

Placed in receivership at the end of September, the Orange subcontractor for fiber optic networks lost the majority of its contract with the incumbent operator at the end of 2021, which provided 40% of its turnover, and had since been fighting to his survival.

During the December 8 hearing before the Lyon Commercial Court, the administrators and legal representatives, as well as the prosecution, had judged the offer of the French company Circet to be more financially sound than that of Newscope, which provided for the safeguard of 1,457 jobs and was supported by a large majority of employees.

According to the court judgment handed down on Wednesday, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, Circet, a French specialist in telecommunications infrastructure which belongs to the British investment fund Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), will take over all of the activities of Scopelec and its subcontractor Setelen with the exception of the Reunion-Mayotte zone, the “uses and services” business branch and the south-east zone for its Gobé and Scopelec Energie Services subsidiaries.

“It’s really a disappointing decision, we are sad after having made all these efforts. 1,049 employees is good, but it is not enough. The responsibility is largely borne by Orange, but also by the government which did not lift a finger,” commented CGT union representative Mario Cesaro.

Scopelec employees on the Saint-Orens-de-Gameville site, during the visit of LFI deputy François Ruffin, September 19, 2022 (AFP / Charly TRIBALLEAU)

In mid-December, the employees had asked President Emmanuel Macron to position themselves in the name of “sovereignty” in favor of their takeover project, but according to Mr. Cesaro this request remained a dead letter.

“Macron did not answer the mail, and we never saw either (the Minister of the Economy) Mr. Le Maire or the Minister of Labor (Olivier Dussopt) despite our calls. We are not listed in Stock market, so we don’t interest them”, lambasted the union representative.

– Orange pointed at –

At the beginning of December, Carlos Verkaeren, chairman of the management board of Scopelec, rose up against Orange, claiming to have been informed that the company, 23% owned by the state, did not support the Newscope project.

“This completely reverses the posture of Orange, which until then had been benevolent, it is unacceptable and incomprehensible”, then explained the management of Scopelec to AFP, while France Bleu reported that Orange would have positioned itself in favor of the offers from Circet and Solution 30.

“We would have had more chances to explain our project, more truth, without the pressure from Orange which disturbed the free will of commercial justice”, castigated Wednesday Cyrille Rocher, director of the Regional Union of Scops in Occitania – where Scopelec is based – which had participated in the drafting of the Newscope offer.

The PS president of the region, Carole Delga, was moved by a decision “to the detriment of employment” when it was, according to her, possible to “maintain this benchmark company in the cable and fiber activity in the French bosom”.

Asked on Wednesday, Orange did not wish to react.

LFI deputy François Ruffin at the Scopelec site in Saint-Orens-de-Gameville, September 19, 2022 (AFP/Archives/Charly TRIBALLEAU)

On December 7, political representatives including Carole Delga, the ecologist mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet and the deputy Nupes François Ruffin had called on the State to “take its responsibilities”, pointing the finger at two “diametrically opposed projects”: those of companies “owned by foreign powers”, and that of Newscope.

The other candidates for the takeover were the companies Alsatis, Kyntus, Solutions 30 and Foliateam.

The largest cooperative group in France (some 2,300 employees in metropolitan France and overseas and 475 million euros in turnover in 2021), Scopelec is a cooperative and participative company (Scop), that is to say that its employees hold the capital (in this case 74.8%) and the decision-making power.

It was created in 1973, at the height of worker cooperatives, in Revel (Haute-Garonne). Its headquarters moved in 2021 to Sorèze, in the Tarn.

Circet, a specialist in fixed and mobile network infrastructures, achieved a turnover of 2.42 billion euros in 2021. The company has 15,350 employees in 14 countries (Europe, Morocco and the United States), including 3,800 in France.

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© 2022 AFP

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