M&S to close seven stores in France
SEVEN Marks & Spencer stores are to shut in the Paris area just five years after the emblematic British brand returned to the Champs-Elysées.
M&S, which is also shutting 30 UK stores (with 45 more converted into food-only shops), will continue to have 11 Marks & Spencer Food franchised shops – and is opening four more by next spring.
Around 520 of the company’s 967 employees in France were told yesterday they faced losing their jobs and although no closure date has been fixed unions said it was likely to be November 2017 after negotiations on redundancy pay and unemployment benefits.
It is the second time M&S has pulled out of France but this time the announcements have been less brutal than in 2001 when it closed 18 shops suddenly, putting 1,700 staff on the streets and sparking a political row.
M&S said its ‘owned’ stores, as opposed to the food-only franchises, had never made money in the five years since opening – and were losing £19million (€26m) a year. It had decided to rein in its clothing side and focus solely on food.
The shops to close are Champs-Elysées, Beaugrenelle (15th arrondissement, Chaussée-d'Antin (9th), Gare Saint-Lazare (8th), Levallois-Perret and Villeneuve-la-Garenne in Hauts-de-Seine and Trembay-en-France in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Union officials told journalists the signs had been on the wall for the ailing chain with fewer deliveries arriving from the UK and the company not bothering to set up a separate warehouse, distribution centre or logistics operation in France.
In Europe, M&S is also closing all its stores in Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, with 2,100 jobs being lost.
