Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
The luxury fashion brand Chanel has announced it is to cut 200 jobs. The luxury group will end all its fixed term contracts from Wednesday 31 December 2008, which involve 200 employees. The cuts represent around 10 percent of production.
Until recently, France's luxury brandnames were claiming immunity from the slump. Demand for the high end was holding up, driven by the luxury appetites of the nouveaux riches of Russia, China and other emerging powers, they said.
This optimism has faded over the past month as Russians and Asians have been noticeably absent over Christmas from the boutiques in the Paris golden triangle off the ‘Champs Élysées’ and their equivalents in London and New York. Business in Japan has slumped.
A week ago Chanel, privately owned and secretive about its affairs, called off a glitzy art show as it was about to arrive in London from New York. Over the weekend trade unions reported that the fashion house was to lay off all of its 200 Paris staff who are on fixed-term contracts.
Sixteen of the employees work in the firm's historic home in the Rue Cambon where the late Coco Chanel dreamt up her little black dresses and No 5 perfume in the 1920s.
The company employs 16,000 people worldwide. Due to a sharp decline in business, Chanel's recorded zero growth in 2008.
Eurofound (2008), Chanel, Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 67747, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/67747.