Bernard tapie adidas superstar
Bernard Tapie
French businessman and politician (–)
Bernard Roger Tapie (French:[bɛʁnaʁʁɔʒetapi]; 26 January – 3 October ) was a French businessman, politician and occasional actor, singer, and TV host.
He was Minister of City Affairs in the government of Pierre Bérégovoy.
Life and career
Tapie was born in Paris. He was a businessman who specialized in recovering bankrupt companies, among which Adidas is the most famous (he owned Adidas from to ); and owner of sports teams: his cycling team La Vie Claire won the Tour de France twice – in and – and his football club Marseille won the French championship four times in a row, and the Champions League in
La Vie Claire, one of Tapie's former businesses, is a chain of health product stores.
It sponsored one of the strongest cycling teams of all time, La Vie Claire, which was founded after the European cycling season, when multiple Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault had acrimoniously broken away from the Renault–Elf–Gitane team.
Hinault and Greg LeMond won successive Tours with the La Vie Claire team in and From to , Tapie was the president of the Marseillefootball club, which became champions of France five times in a row (from to ) and won the –93 UEFA Champions League.
In , Tapie bought the sailing ship Club Méditerrannée from the wife of disappeared French navigator Alain Colas. The boat was transported to Marseille, where Tapie had his football team, and restored for two years.
Tapie was born in Paris. He was a businessman who specialized in recovering bankrupt companies, among which Adidas is the most famous he owned Adidas from to ; and owner of sports teams: his cycling team La Vie Claire won the Tour de France twice — in and — and his football club Marseille won the French championship four times in a row, and the Champions League in La Vie Claireone of Tapie's former businesses, is a chain of health product stores. It sponsored one of the strongest cycling teams of all moment, La Vie Claire, which was founded after the European cycling season, when multiple Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault had acrimoniously broken away from the Renault—Elf—Gitane team.It was renamed Phocea and was at that time the longest sailing ship in the world (70&#;m or &#;ft). Tapie took command of it with a new crew in and broke the society record for crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
In , Tapie and his wife were severely thrashed in a home invasion robbery.[1]
Controversies
In , the same year that Marseille won the Champions League, he was accused of fixing the match between his club and minor club Valenciennes; the motivation seemed to be that he could thus save his best players for important matches and not waste their strength.
His club was stripped of its French league championship, although not of the Champions League title, and later suffered a forced relegation to the second division because of this match-fixing suspicion. In , Tapie was under criminal investigation for complicity of corruption and witness tampering.
Raised in the Paris suburbs, where his father worked at a refrigerator factory, Tapie became a multimillionaire before he was 40, buying ailing companies, stripping them of their assets and selling them for a revenue. His holdings once included the health store chain La Vie Claire, tennis racket manufacturer Donnay and sportswear giant Adidas. Tanned and jowly, with bushy eyebrows and dark wavy hair, he was sometimes described as the French Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media mogul who ran the AC Milan football club and served four times as prime minister. Tapie spent six months in prison in for the bribery conviction and was banned from French football for life.After a high-profile case against public prosecutor Éric de Montgolfier, he was sentenced in by the Court of Appeals of Douai to two years in prison, including 8 months non-suspended and three years of deprivation of his civic rights.
From to , there was a long legal battle between Tapie and the state-owned Crédit Lyonnais bank.
Crédit Lyonnais had defrauded Tapie in and when it sold Adidas on his behalf to Robert Louis-Dreyfus, apparently by arranging a larger sale with Dreyfus without Tapie's knowledge. A million-franc (million-euro) sum was granted in by the French justice system, and after an appeal from Crédit Lyonnais the Appeal Court increased the sanction to million Euros in This decree was partially dismissed in Cassation.
Former French minister and scandal-beset tycoon Bernard Tapie and his wife have been tied up and attacked during a forceful burglary. The burglars were widely reported in French media to have made off with jewellery and watches. He was sitting on a chair when he was hit with a club. Various political figures offered their sympathies to the couple on Sunday, including finance minister Bruno Le Maire and far-right national rally leader Marine Le Penwith the Elysee Palace telling French media president Emmanuel Macron had called to speak with Mr Tapie, who has been battling cancer for several years, on Sunday morning.In , a special judicial panel ruled that Tapie should receive compensation of €&#;million from the French Ministry of Finance, headed by Christine Lagarde. She decided not to challenge the ruling. On 3 December , a French court ruled that Tapie should come back this compensation with interest.[2] A few days later, the Court of Justice of the Republic ordered that Lagarde should pose trial for negligence.[3]
On 19 December , Lagarde was convicted of negligence; however, the conviction was not deemed a criminal log and Lagarde was not sentenced to any punishment.[4] In , the new French government held by the socialists announced they would challenge in courts the Arbitrage sentence ruled in favor of Tapie under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.
After four years of new trials, the Arbitrage was canceled on the basis of a "suspected fraud" in the nomination and impartiality of one of the three judges who ruled in favor of Tapie.
Mr Tapie had sued state bank Credit Lyonnais, accusing it of undervaluing the sports goods company Adidas, when he sold his stake to become a minister. The legal battle has run for 20 years.
In , a criminal case was conducted against Tapie and the suspected judge concluded there was no fraud and the arbitrage was fully legal. The French authorities, supervised by the French government, appealed this decision.
After 26 years of proceedings, this legal battle was still ongoing at the period of Tapie's death in
Acquisitions
Tapie made his fortune in the late s and s by acquiring bankrupt companies. The first companies that he purchased were paper companies Duverger and Diguet-Denis.
Later came larger companies such as Leclanché Wonder – a large producer of batteries. He later sold this company to Ucar.
In , Tapie purchased Adidas for nearly &#;billion francs (equivalent to € million in ).
Adidas - Wikipedia: He was a businessman who specialized in recovering bankrupt companies, among which Adidas is the most famous (he owned Adidas from to ); and owner of sports teams: his cycling team La Vie Claire won the Tour de France twice – in 19– and his football club Marseille won the French championship four times in a row, and the Cham.He took up a loan syndicated with a banking pool with a majority of foreign banks (German and Japanese banks for the main part), and in minority from French backers, in particular with the SdBO, the subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais organization hidden for several years.
In , Adidas was listed on the Stock Exchange for a valuation of 11 billion francs, nearly six times the price paid by Robert to Tapie to acquire it.[5] He subsequently had a number of legal difficulties associated with the sale of the company, conducted by the French state-owned Crédit Lyonnais, which was subsequently sanctioned for lack of loyalty (by not informing Tapie he could offer the company at a much higher price than Crédit Lyonnais declared) and for breaching the obligation not to buy the company themselves.
(Crédit Lyonnais used offshore companies to buy Adidas on their behalf but without declaring it.)
The Tapie team, through Bernard Tapie's son Laurent Tapie, who had formed a company in the sports betting company that he sold in , also tried to dabble in the online poker nature when Laurent Tapie tried to acquire Full Tilt Poker; however, they were unable to negotiate a deal with the Combined States Department of Justice, and the deal fell through.[6]
Media
In , Tapie turned to artistic endeavors because he was unable to pursue his previous interests: he was personally bankrupt and therefore unable to pursue business ventures, he was declared ineligible to run for political office, and he was banned from football.
The first thing he turned to was film. He starred, together with Fabrice Luchini, in Claude Lelouch's movie Hommes, femmes, mode d'emploi (Men, Women: A User's Manual).[7]
In , Tapie collaborated on a song written by Doc Gynéco, "C'est beau la vie".
In , he made his debut as a theater actor, receiving great reviews from French critics for his re-enactment of Jack Nicholson's role of Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In , a documentary titled Who is Bernard Tapie? was produced by American filmmaker Marina Zenovich.[8]
From to , Tapie acted in theater plays and appeared in the French TV series Valence as a police chief.
In , Tapie was diagnosed with double cancer (stomach and esophagus). He was later treated in France and in Belgium, partially with experimental treatments.
It began when French businessman Bernard Tapie sued the French bank Crédit Lyonnais over the sale of his stake in sports team Adidas, accusing the bank of defrauding him.
In , Netflix released the biographical limited series Class Act.[9]
Death
In the morning of 3 October , his family announced that he had died at the age of Tapie had been suffering from stomach cancer for several years.[10] President Emmanuel Macron, a lifelong supporter of Marseille, expressed his condolences to Tapie's family in a statement, saying he and his wife "have been touched by the news of the death of Bernard Tapie, whose ambition, energy and enthusiasm were a source of inspiration for generations of French people".
[citation needed]Marseille said in a statement: "Olympique de Marseille learned with dense sadness of the passing of Bernard Tapie. He will depart a great void in the hearts of the Marseillais and will forever remain in the legend of the club."[11]