Liquidation or recovery plan? France-Antilles , the only daily newspaper in Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyana, in receivership since June 25, will know its fate Tuesday at a hearing of the mixed commercial court of Fort-de-France. If the court does not find the takeover offers satisfactory, the daily, created in March 1964 on the occasion of the official visit of President Charles de Gaulle to Martinique, could definitively disappear.
This would put the 240 employees of the France-Antilles group, former subsidiary of the Hersant group, out of work in Guadeloupe, Guyana and Martinique, where the newspaper offers three separate editions. The daily's future was originally to be decided on December 5, but an additional stay was granted until January 14.
Losses of 500,000 euros per month
"Without new funding, it is the disappearance of France-Antilles and France-Guyana in the very near future", had alerted in the fall the director general of France-Antilles, Frédéric Verbrugghe, judging that "the edition of a daily in each of the three departments will remain structurally in deficit ”, because of“ a readership limited by its geography and demography ”and“ a constrained advertising market ”.
The newspaper currently accuses losses of 500,000 euros per month, for an annual turnover of 28 million euros. It would take a total of 9 million euros to relaunch the daily, and despite state aid of three million, and a contribution of three million euros by investors, it was still lacking at the beginning of December three million euros for complete this financing, as part of the most optimistic takeover offer.
This is that of the current shareholder AJR Participations (company of Aude Jacques-Ruettard, granddaughter of Robert Hersant), who had taken over the daily newspaper in 2017, following a previous bankruptcy. In its offer, it proposes to make the newspaper a tri-weekly with a single printing press, based in Guadeloupe. Guyana would only continue with an internet edition.
Only 114 jobs maintained
But even if funding were closed, only 114 jobs would be maintained. A second buyer, Octopus Network, whose main shareholder is the president of Medef de Guadeloupe, Bruno Blandin, offers to keep only thirty employees in all three departments.
A third offer concerns only Guyana, where a business manager plans to retain around fifteen employees.
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