Progress in the search for investors gives hope to the insolvent retailer SportScheck GmbH. The company said on Thursday that the process had been “successful” so far.
According to the provisional insolvency administrator Axel Bierbach, “by the end of the first phase of the investor process, a large number of interested parties had submitted offers, including traders and financial investors from home and abroad.” After the approval of the provisional creditors’ committee, “negotiations with selected takeover parties will continue in the next phase of the investor process”.
Bierbach was correspondingly optimistic: “There is great interest in taking over SportScheck. This is evidence of a company with attractive products and a well-established and well-known brand in the market,” he explained in a statement. “The discussions with potential investors are going well and constructively. Everyone expects the necessary restructuring contributions from all stakeholders to make SportScheck sustainably successful.” If “everyone involved goes along,” he is “confident that we will find a viable solution for SportScheck,” emphasized Bierbach.
Negotiations are currently underway regarding “necessary cost reductions”
The aim is to complete the restructuring and investor process “by early summer at the latest,” explained Bierbach. However, this requires “restructuring contributions from the landlords of the SportScheck branches, the suppliers and logistics, but also the workforce”. The “necessary cost reductions” are currently being “negotiated intensively”.
SportScheck had to file for bankruptcy at the end of November after promised payments from the also insolvent owner Signa Holding failed to materialize. The already agreed takeover of the retail chain by the British group Frasers Group Plc was then stopped.