It seems that the current scandal at Belgian fashion retailer FNG has been deeply rooted into its past. Is finding out who benefited the key to the secret?
What happened
The sudden fall of the rising star in Belgium’s fashion industry has been a surprise for many, and the specialised press and the watchdogs are only now beginning to uncover the full extent of the matter. What we and others have puzzled together, looks like a web of strange companies operating in a ‘grey zone’ and some financial hi-tech.
Why it matters
Since 2014, a mysterious, small company called Mogali is operating in the shadows of the ambitious fashion group. Belgian newspaper De Standaard has found out that this company leads to Dutch entrepreneur Rens van de Schoor, who seems to be the key figure in the remarkable rise of FNG.
Van de Schoor bought several ailing chains (like Steps and Miss Etam) with his private capital, then restructured them again and sold the ‘clean’ companies to FNG. This system was also used for the purchase of Brantano (jointly with former FNG CEO Dieter Penninckx and Belgian shoe giant Wouter Torfs): private acquisition first, then sanitising the chain and only then admitting it into the FNG group. This means the latter now has a 4 % stake in FNG, representing an investment of 20 million euros that has gone up in smoke as the scandal became public.
Was Belgian fashion chain e5 Mode next in line? The chain entered into a commercial partnership with FNG just months after it was bought by Frédéric Helderweirt – who studied together with Penninckx and is a former employee at Brantano. FNG vehemently denied wanting to acquire e5 Mode, but said the companies would work together through purchase companies in Asia. However, it is now exactly these companies where dubious transactions and deals without contracts have surfaced. It is not yet made public what exactly happened in Hong Kong, but journalists and watchdogs are digging into this matter.
This news brief is based on reporting published by RetailDetail on 2020-06-23. The original report is linked below.
RetailDetail
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