The Commercial Court of Grenoble ordered Wednesday 1er March the placement in receivership of the company Wilsam, owner of the twenty franchise stores of the Gap France brand, we learned on Wednesday 1er March.
The court’s decision has been made “at the request of its leader Patrick Puy and in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution”, said assistant prosecutor François Touret de Coucy in a press release. The tribunal “has appointed the same legal representatives and administrators” that for the company Go Sport, which owns Gap France, “for the sake of economic coherence”he says.
Wilsam’s declaration of cessation of payments was made on the basis of the financial analysis established by the Eight Advisory firm, the court noted in its judgment dated Wednesday. She “shows available assets of 378,856 euros and current liabilities of 26,292,594 euros”be one “negative difference” of nearly 26 million euros, as well as other cash movements between Wilsam and MPI. The end of the observation period was set for August 29.
Last week, Gap France announced that it was “temporarily forced to stop e-commerce orders”. The CFDT had added that one of the brand’s Parisian stores, located on avenue des Ternes in 17e arrondissement of Paris, was going to close at the end of March.
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.
Michel Ohayon’s empire in turmoil
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 2022, leaving some 2,600 employees out of business. And the Grenoble commercial court placed Go Sport France in receivership in early February.
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 Sport” for an amount of 38 million.
This operation and the ” lack of transparency “ on the part of the management worried the 350 employees of Gap France, while Groupe Go Sport, the holding company of the sign specializing in sport, was declared in mid-January in receivership by the Commercial Court of Grenoble. An investigation for “organized gang scam” within the company Go Sport, which owns Gap France, is also underway under the aegis of the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco).