A district court has granted troubled Israeli supermarket, Mega, 30 days of protection from its creditors, and appointed Gabi Trabelsi, Ehud Dines and Amir Bartov as trustees to try to restore the company and sell it, reports jpost.com.
The trustees have been told to put careful consideration into the fates of the of Mega’s 3,500 employees, and have a week to update the court on their plan of action.
Mega is Israel’s second largest supermarket chain, with stores across the country, and is currently close to bankruptcy, with debts of NIS 1.2 billion (approximately €276 million).
The chain reportedly failed to make nearly NIS 50 million in payments to its suppliers on Friday, even though it had some NIS 160 million in cash on hand.
Mega chose instead to shutter its stores on Monday 18 January, and go to court – where, the Times of Israel says, hundreds of its employees also demonstrated to demand that Avigdor Kaplan, chair of the retailer’s holding company, Alon Blue Square, return the NIS 560,000 bonus that shareholders awarded him Sunday.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Jenny Whelan. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
