Day of verdict for the clothing company’s New Look France. In receivership since last march, it should be placed in liquidation this Wednesday at 15h by the Paris commercial Court, on request of the judicial administrators in charge of the company. More than 400 jobs spread over thirty stores are directly threatened in the territory. Since the beginning of his turnaround three months ago, the british group has received two takeover proposals, both of which are related only to a store in paris, the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine. They have been considered to be very credible.
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At the commercial centre of the docks at Rouen, the iron curtain of a point of sale New Look has prematurely dropped at the end of last week. After escaping, he no longer has clothes inside but the employees camped out and took turns, day and night, ready to begin a hunger strike if this allows them to get better starting conditions. This night they were both on the premises. “What we’d like to get it is to fight for the social plan, it is our last fight, it’s been over 11 years for the most part that it is there, and that they are fighting, that we are working for New Look”, said the director of the shop in the Figaro . He said that six million euros on the French account of the company, the employees ask that the money be used for the social plan. For them, this battle could not be prolonged after the 1st of July, the date on which the lease of the site ends.
“It is not acceptable that the State and the French employees, who are the turkeys of the farce of the strategic choices made by a group of English”, pleads his side Judith Krivine, a lawyer of the employees. She adds that the group has “an investment fund of south africa behind him” and that he has touched “more than a million euros of CICE (tax credit competitiveness employment)” of the French State. If the liquidation is pronounced this day as planned at 15h, all employees in France would be dismissed within 21 days, except for the representatives of the staff, who benefit from a “timeout” to review their case, note also the lawyer.
net Profit down 92%
In difficulty for several years, New Look was launched in September last year a comprehensive restructuring plan designed to remove approximately 262 positions and to close 21 points of sale. To 67 million euros for the year 2017, the revenue is in steady decline since 2013. Worse still, on the fiscal year 2016-2017, the net income of the company fell by 92%. In the framework of this plan, Monday 10 September 2018, the group’s management announced suddenly to its employees to one of the two shops of Rouen that it would be closing next week. The future of the seven employees at the time had not been mentioned beforehand. In Calais, a point-of-sale knew the same fate.
The arrival of new leaders in November had put an end to this plan, but these were not able to meet the ensign, already weakened to the international. In a few years, New Look, and a witness of the difficulties that he knows the market, has closed all of its stores in China, in Belgium as well as 60 in the United Kingdom for 980 jobs.
