René Mayer

"Suppliers demanded that René Mayer be paid in cash? They now accept payment within fifty days. On their side, bankers open a credit line of 340 million francs. The lead banks for this loan are Société Générale and Crédit Commercial de France, the bank that deliberately assassinated the Willot family in 1981. Both are nationalized."

"However, successive administrations by Marcel Boussac, the Willot family, and René Mayer have left a mountain of debt, amounting to no less than 3.6 billion francs. Before figuring out how to repay this debt (meaning which assets he will have to sell), Arnault's primary concern is to reduce this amount by obtaining waivers and payment deferrals from creditors. He will therefore ask creditors to make sacrifices, using a powerful argument: he will only invest 400 million in the company if his conciliation proposals are approved. In the event of rejection, there will be no other option but judicial liquidation. The implication is that in this case, creditors will have nothing left to do but weep."

"As reported by Patrick Lamm, in his book, Investigation into the Boussac Affair: "Attacked from the right by financial circles and from the left by the leftists of Libé, René Mayer has gotten himself into a fine mess."

"As Alain Boublil explains in his book The Uprising of the Seraglio: "This disagreement stemmed from a misunderstanding. Dominique de La Martinière thought he would have authority over René Mayer, as a majority shareholder does over his CEO. But that was not the contract made between the State and René Mayer. " Dominique de La Martinière intends to keep control and demands to have the majority on the Company's board of directors. But René Mayer intends to govern with confidante personalities... A tug of war begins. The head of IDI, the majority shareholder, throws his hat into the ring and wins the bet. Of the twelve board directors, eight will be appointed from within the IDI circle including Jean-Pierre Lacour and Jean-Paul Elkann."

"For René Mayer, the return to profitability first requires maximizing the use of production tools. But to sell quantities, prices must be slashed and often sales are made at a loss. Gérard Bélorgey notes in his memoirs: "At his first meeting with the executives, he is pleased that sheet sales have doubled. We lose 2 francs for every meter sold..." Instead of announcing a return to profits, the increase in turnover is publicized. This dumping infuriates competitors who cry scandal. The subsidies granted to Boussac result in completely distorting competition in the market, particularly in the areas of upholstery fabrics and household linens."

"But a president was needed... Many industry captains approached recused themselves given the enormity of the task and the political context of the case. After many court intrigues, it was finally a self-made polytechnic, René Mayer, former director of the National Geographic Institute, who was chosen. He is confronted with immediate financial challenges he had never known, nor even imagined."

"The real estate service of the group scouts as much as it can to divest the very diverse assets that make up the non-operational heritage: land, workers' houses, head offices, factory buildings, warehouses... Those that cannot be sold are rented out. The Mivoisin estate, a flagship of this heritage, must be returned to profitability in order to be sold. It consists of 3,600 hectares spread across agricultural land, forests, and hunting grounds. A pleasure property must be turned into a profitable operation. The staff is reduced from 80 to 20 people. To combine utility with pleasure, under the impulse of René Mayer, the castle is also used by the group as a seminar center."

"They continue their legal guerrilla warfare. They first appeal the December 1983 ruling of the Lille Commercial Court, which had pronounced the confusion of assets of BSF and SFFAW. Then, in June 1984, they request the outright cancellation of the agreement signed a year earlier with René Mayer, on the grounds, in particular, that they did not receive the positions they had been promised and that the financial situation of the Boussac Saint Frères Company had significantly deteriorated and no longer allows for the presentation of a proposal for concordat."

"The first procedure concerns the appeal that the Willot brothers had filed against a judgment delivered on December 23, 1983, which declared the merger of assets between BSF and SFFAW. This decision was part of the conditions for the implementation of the July 1983 agreement between the Willot brothers and René Mayer. Having not been applied, these agreements are now the subject of another annulment procedure initiated by the Willot brothers before the Lille commercial court, which was to take place on October 12, 1984, with a judgment to be delivered in November. Finally, the brothers will not pursue their appeal for various reasons: it does not contradict their position regarding agreements with CBSF, it has no impact on the criminal proceedings they face for misappropriation of corporate assets, it opens the way to a concordat solution, and finally, would reduce the liabilities to be repaid from 3.1 to 2.7 billion francs."

"Curiously, during a trip by the President of the Republic to Lot-et-Garonne, René Mayer announces the creation, with the support of Saint-Gobain Développement, of a hygiene products manufacturing unit in Fumel that could employ 120 people."

"Bernard Arnault is, of course, questioned about his relations with the Willot brothers in the context of the agreements he has signed. He replies unequivocally that he is in no way the "front man" for the brothers. Contrary to the agreements signed with René Mayer, none of them will have any managerial power. Dior will not be sold to finance the concordat deadlines. The agreement signed is irreversible, the Willot brothers have signed the transfer slips of their titles. The workforce will be reduced from 15,640 to 12,252 without layoffs. He emphasizes the quality of the investors who will participate in the takeover operation alongside him. The direct and deliberate nature of his answers impresses the union representatives, who nevertheless remain very wary."

"Far from the paneling of Avenue Montaigne, in Wambrechies, the next day, a meeting of the central company committee takes place. The agenda is spicy: proposal for job cuts and divestments of activities. The meeting is particularly stormy. The unions and the staff representatives cry out against the dismantling of the group. The divestments concern the tailoring unit of Le Pigeon Voyageur in Béthune, the tarpaulin and ropemaking activities of Saint Frères in Flixecourt, the Ted Lapidus tailoring factory in Fécamp, and the Raclet tents in Mamers. These divestments were already planned in the SADEF report and in René Mayer's three-year plan."