The fate of the 20 franchised establishments of the Gap France brand will be decided by the court on Wednesday.
The parquet floor of the Grenoble commercial court on Monday requested the placement in receivership of the 20 franchise stores of the Gap France brand, owned by the Bordeaux businessman Michel Ohayon, who also owns Camaïeu and Go Sport. The prosecution told AFP that it had requested the measure, confirming information from Liberation, and specified that the wage guarantee scheme (AGS) “ensure the payment of wages“. A court ruling is expected on Wednesday.
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The elected staff of the ready-to-wear brand had exercised their right to alert at the end of January in order to obtain information on the situation of their company, bought in 2021 for one euro by the HPB group (Hermione, People & Brands), who announced that they would resell it to Go Sport. Last week, Gap France announced that it was “temporarily forced to stop e-commerce orders“. The CFDT had added that one of the Parisian stores of the sign, located avenue des Ternes in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, would close by the end of March.
Bordeaux businessman Michel Ohayon, who made his fortune in real estate before buying retail chains such as Camaïeu, Go Sport, Gap France as well as around twenty Galeries Lafayette stores outside Paris, is in turmoil since weeks. Camaïeu was brutally liquidated in September, leaving some 2,600 employees out of business. And the Grenoble commercial court placed Go Sport France in receivership in early February.
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HPB, the distribution arm of Financière immobilière bordelaise (FIB), an investment fund owned by Michel Ohayon, who owns the network of Gap clothing stores in France, announced on January 12 “the acquisition of Gap France by Go Sportfor an amount of 38 million. This operation and thelack of transparencyfrom the management worried the 350 employees of Gap France, while Groupe Go Sport, the holding company of the brand specializing in sport, was declared in mid-January in receivership by the Commercial Court of Grenoble.