employees before the Marseille commercial court to find out about buyout offers
This Tuesday, the union representatives of the La Provence group came before the Marseille commercial court to demand the opening of the two offers to buy back Bernard Tapie’s shares.
Representatives of the employees of the La Provence group have demanded on Tuesday the opening of the first offers to buy back the shares of the Bernard group Tapie (GBT) before the Commercial Court of Marseille which reserved its judgment on February 14.
This is the future of six companies that are at stake on the benches of justice, La Provence, Corse-Matin, Sud Presse distribution, Corse distribution, Corse presse and Eurosud Publicité.
Following the death of his boss Bernard Tapie, the regional daily had to find a buyer. To redeem the 89% of the shares, the candidates for redemption had until November 30 to make themselves known.
Out of four potential candidates, two of them eventually filed an offer to Me Xavier Brouard, the judicial liquidator of the group held by Bernard Tapie until his death.
On one side, the founder of Free, Xavier Niel. On the other, the Marseille giant of maritime transport, the CMA-CGM.
The first appeared as the natural buyer of the title and favorite share: his holding company NJJ already held 11% of the capital of this newspaper while Bernard Tapie held the remaining 89%.
What the national journalists’ union recalled in a press release of October 21: “You should know that already present in Provence, NJJ clearly has a head start, especially since a shareholders’ agreement signed with GBT gives it a preference.”
Xavier Niel also bought the Nice-Matin group in 2019. He does not hesitate to speak of a “powerful brand inscribed in our regional and national heritage” to describe Provence.
The second almost created a surprise. The CMA-CGM group, the world’s third-largest shipowner and handed over by Rodolphe Saadé, employs 110,000 people worldwide.
He had already tried to gain a foothold a Provence in 2019, without success. Very attached to the Marseille daily, Rodolphe saade explains wanting to “write a new page in the history” of the regional daily.
In a letter sent to staff representatives, the president of CMA-CGM undertakes to maintain editorial independence. “There will be no redundancy“, adds the one who also wants to give a new digital dimension to everyday life.
On November 11, the Commercial Court of Marseille suspended the shareholders’ pact which gave Xavier Niel a right of veto, as a minority shareholder, over any candidate for the acquisition of 89% of GBT (Bernard Tapie Group).
The approval clauseobstructs the process of realization of the assets of the judicial liquidation of the Bernard Tapie Group (..) and constitutes a manifestly illicit disturbance“, wrote the judge of the Commercial Court of Marseille in his interim order.
A decision appealed by Xavier Niel.
The offers filed on November 30 by these two candidates have not been studied, while the liquidator is launching a new tender procedure.
On February 1, a second call for tenders was launched by the joint liquidators judicial proceedings, the candidates being able to file their files until February 14 at noon for an opening the next day.
“What we want is for it to go live, for it to be competitive, with a social aspect, and to be able to give our opinion on the future buyer. we have the impression that this file is left for months of procedures that collide and that the employees are completely kept out of the game“, explains Sophie Manelli, of the national union of journalists.
“We have delivered ourselves to testify at the same time to our concerns, our anger and our indignation. We have the impression that the 850 employees are taken for fools in a business where we are trapped and hostages of small arrangements between friends which is perfectly scandalous”explains Julie Sanguinetti FO, Corse-Matin.
“We are being forced into this new procedure when no one has ever seen the
offers from both candidates“, notes Catherine Swarcz, lawyer for the applicants,
evoking “a manifestly unlawful disorder” for employee representatives
who have the right to be informed and to give their opinion on the procedure in progress.
The Commercial Court of Marseille was seized in summary proceedings by three of the six CSE (social and economic committee) of the La Provence group, with the support of the Syndicate of journalists SNJ of La Provence and FO and CGT of Corse Matin. They asked him to order the transfer to Marseille of the first offers submitted to Bobigny and their opening. But at the hearing, the lawyer for the company “Avenir Développement”, controlled by Xavier Niel, explained that this request from the CSE “no longer had any reason to be”, his client having already recovered the envelope containing his offer to the Commercial Court of Bobigny.
The lawyers, the two judicial liquidators and the daily newspaper La Provence, for their part, contested the admissibility of the procedure initiated by the CSE in Marseille, stressing in particular that only the commercial court of Bobigny was competent on the question of the takeover offers. In his argument, Me Swarcz justified the urgency of his referral by “the social and psychological risks and the palpable tensions” within the daily newspaper linked to the ongoing takeover procedure, regretting that the interests of employees are taking a back seat.
The circulation of La Provence, one of the flagship daily newspapers in the south-east of France, has shown a steady decline in recent years, dropping from around 100,0000 daily copies in 2017 to around 75,000 today.
The La Provence group also owns the regional daily Corse-Matin.
The companies of Bernard Tapie, the businessman who died in October, have been in compulsory liquidation since 2020 and have been ordered to pay around 400 million to the structures managing the liabilities of Crédit Lyonnais.