The Court of Economic Activities in Paris awarded the management of historic but troubled sportswear brand Le Coq Sportif to a consortium led by Franco-Swiss businessman Dan Mamane. The brand has been in bankruptcy proceedings since November of last year.
According to the ruling, as quoted by the AFP, Mamane’s group will be investing €70 million in Le Coq and restructuring the company’s payroll, cutting 89 to 94 posts, retaining 201 and establishing 14. At end-2024, according to the AFP, Le Coq employed 359 people, 310 of them in France.
L’Équipe reports that the new management will also be closing offices in the cities of Paris and Strasbourg and some number of stores while preserving Le Coq’s historic center of operations, factory included, in Romilly-sur-Seine.
Alexandre Fauvet as Le Coq’s new CEO
Alexandre Fauvet, former CEO of Lacoste and co-founder of another French company, Fusalp, will be taking charge of Le Coq’s general management. Modaes reports that Cédric Meston, Head of Tupperware France, might also be joining the executive suite.
Mamane has, in recent years, effected a turnaround – in about 30 months – of Conforama Suisse, a retailer of furniture, electronics, and small appliances, acquired in 2020. In November 2024 he acquired 50 percent of skiwear brand Ogier, investing “several million.”
Iconix offered €60 million
His rival consortium for Le Coq – consisting of French turnaround investment firm Neopar, American holding company Iconix (Umbro, Starter, Pony, Danskin), businessman Xavier Niel, judoka Teddy Riner, Le Coq Sportif founding family the Camusets and current Airesis President Marc-Henri Beausire – was pledging an immediate investment of €60 million.
It has since addressed a five-page letter of complaint to the court’s President and to the Office of the Prosecutor in Paris, asking that the bankruptcy proceedings be reopened and alleging “systematic obstruction” and deliberate exclusion on the part of the judicial administrators, who “in the first weeks of the proceedings decided to adopt the plan supported by Mr. Mamane as their own.”
In L’Équipe’s view, recent months had hinted at the French state’s preference for Mamane’s bid, Le Coq having accrued debts with public actors. In support of this the paper quotes Franck Leroy, President of France’s Grand Est region, which holds €1.2 million of Le Coq’s debt. “Of the first bids,” Leroy said in mid-May, “one seemed to become the favorite.”
Le Coq Sportif posts losses
Also in favor of the Darmane plan was Le Coq’s employee representative body, or Comité Social et Économique de l’Entreprise (CSE). (All French companies with at least 11 employees are bound by law to set up a CSE.)
Le Coq Sportif was founded in 1882 and was France’s official sportswear supplier for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, last year.
The company’s revenues rose by 30 percent to €82 million in the first half of 2024, but losses persisted for the period, amounting to €18 million. For full-year 2023 shrinking margins and low sales outside the home market of France generated a net income of negative €28 million on revenues of €121 million.
