Coq Sportif: Franco-Swiss entrepreneur Dan Mamane to take over the equipment manufacturer

The offer made by Franco-Swiss businessman Dan Mamane was accepted on Friday July 4 to take over the struggling equipment manufacturer Le Coq Sportif, at the expense of a consortium supported by Xavier Niel and Teddy Riner, whose lawyers had denounced a "flawed process" .

Le Coq Sportif, which equipped the French delegation at the Paris Olympic Games last summer and had 359 employees at the end of 2024, including 310 in France, was placed in receivership last November.

In a judgment, the Paris Economic Activities Court (formerly the Commercial Court) indicated that it "was stopping the recovery plan presented by the judicial administrators and based on Dan Mamane's project" .

"Various difficulties" have led the equipment manufacturer to "cumulative losses over the last four financial years reaching an amount of around 80 million euros for the company LCSI" , the main operating company which owns the group's brands, details the court which reports "an extremely precarious cash flow situation" and "a cash flow impasse which was looming from December" .

The successful bid stipulates that Made 2 Design, the personal holding company of Dan Mamane, known for having acquired and then resold Conforama Switzerland, would own just over 50% of Le Coq Sportif. Dan Mamane is supported by several investors, including Alexandre Fauvet, former CEO of the ski clothing brand Fusalp.

This project provides for "the refocusing of the group around the product with a segmentation of the offer, an overhaul of the distribution network around new partners and the closure of unprofitable stores, the development of the women's range as well as international sales" , thanks in particular to "new contributions at group level of 70 million euros, of which 16 million euros were paid during the observation period" .

At the social level, it is planned "a social restructuring which would allow the maintenance of 201 positions by implementing between 89 and 94 job cuts, including 81 to 86 permanent contracts after the creation of 14 new positions" , according to the judgment. Also planned is "the inalienability of the brand + Le Coq Sportif + for a period of 4 years" .

Two bids were initially in the running to take over the equipment manufacturer: Dan Mamane and a consortium bringing together French billionaire Xavier Niel, judoka Teddy Riner, the investment company Neopar, the American group Iconix (Lee Cooper, Umbro) as well as Marc-Henri Beausire, the current boss of Airesis, the parent company of Le Coq Sportif, and the Camuset family, founders of the brand.

At the end of June, the consortium's lawyers stated in a five-page letter addressed to the president of the court and to the public prosecutor of Paris that their takeover plan had been "deliberately hindered, weakened, then effectively excluded from the examination process" and had been the subject of "methodical obstruction by the judicial administrators" .

The business law firm August Debouzy indicated that it was "requesting the reopening of the discussions in the context of the examination of the draft recovery plans, in that the process followed to date has been, in many respects, flawed by breaches of the fundamental principles governing collective proceedings."

He also considered that "the plan presented by the consortium (had) not been rejected because of its economic or legal characteristics, but because the judicial administrators, from the first weeks of the procedure, decided to make the plan supported by Mr Mamane their own plan" .