The Cooperative Company, specialized in optical fiber, had been placed in receivership at the end of September.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
scopelec had desperately looking for a savior for a month. It’s done. The French group Circet, which belongs to the British Investment Fund Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), was chosen by the Commercial Court of Lyon to take over the majority of Scopelec’s activities, the first French cooperative group, placed in receivership on 26 September.
According to the tribunal judgment, Circet, French specialist in telecommunications infrastructure, undertakes to resume 1,049 out of 2,300 employees in the group and its Sételen subsidiary. During the hearing of December 8, the administrators and legal representatives, as well as the prosecution, had judged the offer of Circet more solidly strong than that of newscope, which provided for the safeguard of 1,457 jobs and was carried by a majority of employees.
loss of turnover
scopelec assured the fiber optics and the maintenance of the copper network for Orange before the announcement, in November 2021, of the loss of the majority of this market, which provided 40 % of its turnover . This cooperative and participative company (SCOP) still had 3,600 employees in 2021 and achieved a turnover of 475 million euros.
In mid-December, the employees had asked the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to take a position, in the name of “sovereignty”, in favor of their recovery project. The day before the hearing, political representatives – including the president of the Occitanie region, the socialist Carole Delga, the mayor of Lyon, the environmentalist Grégory Doucet, and the deputy of the Natps François Ruffin – had called the State to “take responsibility”.
The other candidates for the takeover were the companies Alsatis, Kyntus, Solutions 30 and Foliateam.