Patrick Puy becomes managing director of the Go Sport group. Hermione People Brands (HPB), a subsidiary of Financière immobilière bordelaise (FIB), shareholder of the sporting goods brand, announced that she would take office on Wednesday January 4. This specialist in the restructuring of companies in great financial difficulty “will have the mission of continuing the necessary transformation” of the company, HPB announces by press release, Tuesday, January 3.
The Go Sport group, which the FIB bought in early 2022 for one euro from the Rallye group, parent company of Casino, is going through a financial crisis, according to its auditors, Ernst & Young and KPMG. In a special alert report submitted to the Grenoble Commercial Court in November 2022, the two firms noted in particular how much the business continuity [leur] seems compromised”.
Since then, the company’s Social and Economic Committee (CSE) has asked the Grenoble Commercial Court to appoint a judicial administrator. And the prosecution summoned the management of HPB to determine whether the sign was in danger of insolvency shortly. A scenario denied by the management of HPB. During a hearing at the Grenoble Commercial Court on December 21, 2022, an investigating judge, Alain Bret, was appointed. The mission of this judge will be to “Make an accurate statement of the financial situation” of the group and its French subsidiary, according to the court. If the suspension of payments is characterized, a receivership procedure will be opened. “There is no urgency in the financial situation of Go Sport”, had then specified HPB. The Grenoble Commercial Court will meet again on Monday January 16 to examine the case.
Several social plans to his credit
The arrival of Patrick Puy must make it possible to support the trajectory of returning to profits from 2023, after 17 years of losses and thus to preserve the company in the long term”said in a press release Wilhelm Hubner, president of HPB and former manager of Camaïeu, a women’s clothing brand owned by the FIB until its judicial liquidation in early October 2022. Presented by HPB as “well-versed in social dialogue in business”Mr. Puy succeeds Benoît Verdier, Chief Executive Officer who left his post at the end of 2022 a few months after his appointment.
Staff representatives from the Go Sport group (2,160 employees) are concerned about the profile chosen by HPB to lead the brand, whose losses are recurrent. Aged 67, Patrick Puy notably managed Brandt-Moulinex in 2001, TDF France in 2010, Arc International in 2013 and the Vivarte group. At the head of this heavily indebted conglomerate, from the end of 2016 to 2021, this polytechnician carried out several social plans, including one within La Halle in 2017, teaches finally placed in receivership in 2020 and partially taken over by the Beaumanoir group in August 2020 at the cost of 3,200 redundancies. Mr. Puy also promptly signed the sale of each of the brands owned by Vivarte (Naf-Naf, André, Minelli, San Marina, Kookaï, Chevignon and Caroll).
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