The Paris Commercial Court decides Friday on the takeover of La Grande Récré, its competitor JouéClub being in a good position with an offer concerning almost all stores and employees of the brand. At the end of April, Ludendo Entreprises, the parent company of La Grande Récré and belonging to the galaxy of businessman Michel Ohayon, had announced that it had obtained, "at its request", the commercial court the opening of a liquidation procedure concerning it, "with maintenance and continuation of the activity" of the toy brand "in order to allow its recovery".
La Grande Récré currently has some 140 stores (integrated or franchised points of sale) and just over 1000,17 employees, including franchisees. The number of candidates for the takeover has not been formalized, but three had made themselves known: competitors JouéClub and King Jouet, heavyweights in the sector, as well as the shoe brand Chaussea with a project for "a number of stores". King Jouet had finally announced its withdrawal from the race on May <>. "We are the only ones to propose a global takeover offer," said JouéClub president Jacques Baudoz in May.
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The final offer of JouéClub is not known, but in its initial version, the brand proposed to take over 90% of the integrated network of the Grande Récré, the 50 franchise contracts, the "corners" in other brands (Casino, Total, Club Med) and guaranteed the continuity of operation of the brand. This cooperative (290 points of sale) had said that its offer would preserve "more than 1000 direct and indirect jobs".
Thursday evening, in a statement, Michel Ohayon believes that "on all the candidates for the acquisition, the court should choose the buyer who has our preference: the Bordeaux JouéClub. It should indeed preserve almost all of the jobs, a little more than those saved in 2018 at the time of the support of the continuity plan, because of the jobs created since then. " "We have financially supported the company in a powerful and permanent way: purchase in 2018 of 80 million euros of debt, redemption in 2021 for 26 million of the debt of the banking pool, thus providing the company with 106 million of equity, in conversion into capital," highlights Michel Ohayon. But "no longer able to provide new guarantees, so the decision was made to sell the company," he adds.
