Who is Stéphan Français, the industrialist who wants to take over Brandt?

The boss, who offered to take over the company on Wednesday, presents himself as a solid industrialist who has, to his credit, the relaunch of the Thomson computer brand.

Is Brandt saved? The household appliances company, a French industrial flagship, was liquidated by the commercial court on December 11, already in great difficulty since being placed in receivership. But a boss has just proposed a takeover offer. The announcement was made with great fanfare on Wednesday December 24. His name? Stéphan French.

The current manager of the Thomson Computing company proposes to retain a little more than one employee in five, and to manufacture electronic and computer products, by refocusing it on a single production site, in Saint-Jean-de-la-Ruelle, near Orléans.

Stéphan Français likes to talk about his family connection with Thomson, which he took over in 2013. His father was an engineer there for 30 years. He himself assures that he manufactured computers before reselling them to friends, in the 1990s while he was studying.

The man remained in the same field, starting his career at Surcouf, the computer stores, which have now disappeared. He then took over the Thomson brand and relaunched computer production. While everything remains manufactured in Asia, part of the assembly of laptops and the design of software and products is done in France.

Stéphan Français convinces judoka Teddy Riner to buy 10% of the company’s capital, and claims to have taken market share from the giants Apple, HP, Lenovo. More than 3 million PCs have been sold in ten years. On paper, the profile of Stéphan Français can therefore be attractive. Except that the unions don’t seem very enthusiastic.

In fact, the industrialist plans to take on 150 employees out of Brandt’s 700 employees before the liquidation. “It’s too little. We can do better, find a better offer”pleads the CGT. Stéphan Français wants to consolidate production on a single site, near Orléans, close the one in Loir-et-Cher, and after-sales service in Val d’Oise.

The Minister Delegate in charge of Industry Sébastien Martin remains cautious. The latter calls on the social network not to rush and “find a lasting solution”at the risk of proposing a project that is unstable in the long term, or even unreliable. Bercy has not yet received Stéphan Français’ offer in detail.

The call for applications to buy the Brandt brand is not launched until next month. And it will be up to the company’s liquidator to decide whether or not there is a strong enough offer on the table.