While the group toys’r’us has announced to close all of its 735 stores in the United States on Thursday, its French subsidiary, is negotiating with “several interested parties” for a recovery. In the meantime, activity continues in the 53 stores French.
“We are in the process of studying the measures to be put in place in order to preserve the continuity of the activity as well as the interests of all of our (1.300) employees,” said John Charretteur, ceo of toys’r’us for France, Spain and Portugal . “My team and I are looking at all options to keep the business” in order to find a “permanent solution” to preserve jobs, he added. A committee of business was underway Thursday morning at the French headquarters of the american distributor of toys, in Saint-Fargeau-Ponthierry (Seine-et-Marne).
Bankruptcy of the parent company
Mr. Charretteur said that the ongoing negotiations with buyers were also subsidiaries of australian, Polish, Spanish and Portuguese, but they were not “as advanced” as those implemented for the subsidiaries, asian, German, austrian, and swiss group. The canadian subsidiary of the distributor could take over a part of american stores to be liquidated, about 200 of them, he still said : “they are at the judge today.”
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In France, “the activity continues and our stores are open,” he said. In 2016, the French subsidiary of toys’r’us had a turnover of more than € 300 million, added Mr. Charreteur, stating that the accounts for 2017 had not yet been published. For him, the bankruptcy of the parent company in the United States is to put it on the back of a debt too large which prevented him from “giving oxygen” to a business constraint in addition to “adapt and invest to modernise”.
Famous for its supermarkets of toys opened in the 1980s and 1990s in the outskirts of cities, toysrus, born after the war to Washington, was declared bankrupt in September 2017. The decision of liquidation of its 735 stores american threat a thirty thousand jobs, half of the global workforce of the group.
(Source : AFP)
