Bernard Tapie passed away on Oct. 3 after a four-year fight against cancer, only three days before a scheduled Oct. 6 verdict by a Paris Appeals Court over the controversial sale of Adidas to the late Robert Louis-Drefus in 1994. He was 78 years old.
Tapie, a very popular French self-made man, started or bought and resold some 40 other smaller struggling businesses in various sectors including Donnay, the Belgian brand of tennis racquets, and Look, the French manufacturer of ski bindings. After buying these two firms in 1983 and 1988, respectively, he made a big capital gain when he resold them.
Tapie is best known in the sporting goods sector for his purchase of Adidas in 1990 from the Dassler family with the help of a French bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which in the end pocketed most of the capital gains from its resale.
Under his ownership, Adidas became profitable after closing some of its European factories and modernizing its image with the help of Rob Strasser and Peter Moore, two former top managers of Nike who had started to work for the Big a in 1989.
Besides his long tussle with Crédit Lyonnais over Adidas, Tapie had several other debacles with justice. He had to spend six months in prison in 1997 for fixing a football match while he was the owner and president of the Olympique de Marseille (OM) football team, which eventually won the French League and the UEFA Champions League under his leadership.
A passionate sports leader who set a record in crossing the Atlantic Ocean with his big sailing yacht, Phocea, Tapie is also credited to have helped Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond to win the Tour de France cycling race. Both of them were made to use Look’s new line of cycling pedals, launched after Tapie took over the company, along with a colorful branded line of apparel inspired by Mondrian’s paintings.
With the support of President François Mitterrand, Tapie became a socialist member of the French and European Parliament. He served twice as a government minister in the 1990s. An indefatigable man, he also played on and off as a signer and as a theater and TV actor.
