French fashion house Sonia Rykiel, whose brightly striped sweater dresses came to symbolise the rebel spirit of the French 1960s, has gone into liquidation, the Paris commercial court said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The brand’s founder, who was nicknamed “the Queen of Knitwear” by industry magazine Women’s Wear Daily, died in 2016, a few years after the family sold control of the label to Hong Kong investors. Sales failed to pick up under their ownership.
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France has launched a long-awaited and highly contentious overhaul of its pension system, setting up another battle between labour unions and President Emmanuel Macron, who is trying to push ahead with his reform agenda following months of anti-government protests, the Financial Times reported.
H2O Asset Management co-founder Vincent Chailley defended his firm’s “deep value debt” in a video posted on its website Friday, referring to the unlisted bonds that have triggered mass investor redemptions, contributing to an almost 8 billion-euro ($9.1 billion) slide in assets, Bloomberg News reported. H20 won’t sell unless there’s an attractive bid, he said. It’s also planning to set up a new fund specializing in “deep value” securities. In its simplest form, deep value investing means buying assets whose market price is below their intrinsic value.
Casino Guichard Perrachon on Thursday unveiled a plan to simplify the complex shareholding structure for its Latin American operations, sending shares in its Brazilian and Colombian units soaring. The restructuring would result in Casino controlling its Latin American business in Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina through a 41.4% stake in Brazilian unit Grupo Pao de Acucar (GPA).
Hedge funds that bet on the demise of Rallye SA will get the pay day they chased for years after a bond auction to settle derivatives linked to the indebted retail group, Bloomberg News reported. Buyers of credit-default swaps on the parent of French supermarket chain Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA will collect 87.5% of the amount insured, according to final auction results on Thursday. That equates to a payout of $522 million, based on data from the International Swaps & Derivatives Association.
The French fiscal administration has launched an in-depth probe into the wealth of former Renault-Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, French daily Liberation reported on Sunday, citing sources. Ghosn, who holds French, Lebanese and Brazilian citizenship, is facing financial misconduct charges, which he denies.
The creditors of indebted French marine services company Bourbon reached a restructuring deal that would give them control of the company, protect jobs and draw new liquidity, Reuters reported. Bourbon has been hurt by market overcapacity and a fall in spending on services by upstream oil and gas companies, but the deal with its creditors lifted its shares. Bourbon’s stock rose 24% in early session trading, although it is still down around 36% so far this year.
Skilled workers are in short supply for the eurozone’s smaller businesses, which spells good news for wages and domestic demand as the single-currency region enjoys record low unemployment, the Financial Times reported. One in four small and medium-sized businesses in the eurozone said that the biggest challenge they face is a lack of skilled labour. This is the highest proportion across all the issues they face and is up from 15 per cent three years ago, a survey by the European Central Bank found on Wednesday.
Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA’s parent companies were placed in creditor protection as Chairman Jean-Charles Naouri scrambles to save the debt-burdened group from collapse, Bloomberg News reported. Rallye SA, saddled with 2.9 billion euros ($3.4 billion) of debt, and the other holding companies Naouri uses to control the retailer Casino filed for a French court procedure called “sauvegarde,” which gives them at least six months to plan a debt restructuring, they said in a statement Thursday. During the process, Rallye and Casino will keep the same management, a company spokesman said.
The share price of Casino’s parent company closed at an all-time low on Wednesday, on the back of heightened concerns about the sustainability of the chain of heavily indebted companies that control the French retailer, the Financial Times reported. Casino’s chief executive Jean-Charles Naouri — a stalwart of the French establishment — controls the group through three publicly listed investment holding companies. These entities each have their own debts, putting pressure on them to keep paying dividends up the chain.