La Halle (830 stores, 5,391 employees) is looking for buyers, in the plural. The safeguard procedure, initiated since April 21, failed to find a solution ensuring the preservation of the ready-to-wear brand as a whole.
With the placement in receivership, the seven groups that had already positioned themselves for partial recoveries (including Beaumanoir, Gémo, Chausséa and Lidl) will have to make a new offer before June 9. We have a few days to work on improving them and finding others, for both stores and logistics, said Patrick Puy, CEO of Vivarte, the parent company. My concern is to secure as many jobs as possible.
Because the proposals hitherto put on the table concerned only 60% of the workforce. And the brand’s two logistics warehouses in Indre (500 employees) were absent.
Pending warehouses
Employees are worried, reports Karim Cheboubb, union secretary (CGT) of the company’s social economic committee. In logistics, they are completely stunned by what is happening to them.
And Patrick Puy’s statements do not seem to reassure him: We cling to the hope of a buyer for at least part of the logistics, but until we have touched a concrete offer …
The employees will be definitively fixed on their fate during a hearing which should take place on June 29.
The health crisis will have cost 106 million euros in turnover at La Halle. The coup de grace for a still fragile business after years of financial difficulty, and who had not obtained a state guaranteed loan.
– .
