Aix-en-Provence, Clermont-Ferrand, La Roche-sur-Yon, Créteil, Montauban and Paris Montparnasse. Twenty-six of the 109 stores and outlets of the French clothing chain Burton of London will close this Saturday. As part of this job protection plan, "at most" 221 of the 441 employees could be dismissed, according to concordant sources on Friday. The group, bought for a symbolic euro at the end of 2020 by entrepreneur Thierry Le Guénic, was placed in safeguard procedure last October.

"26 stores will close tomorrow Saturday," Anne-Marie Da Costa, union delegate of the CFTC, told AFP on Friday, adding that "three stores have already been closed". The union, majority at Burton, specifies that according to the job protection plan - approved a few days ago with the Drieets (Regional Directorate of the Economy, Employment, Labour and Solidarity) - "221 employees out of 441 will be dismissed", "62 stores will be closed or sold, and only 47 will remain open".

Unprofitable stores

The CFTC denounces in a press release "a real social breakdown, especially since the plan to safeguard employment provides for very weak or even deplorable social measures, while the leader owns several companies with colossal means".

For his part, Thierry Le Guénic, majority shareholder, told AFP that the company had "been put in safeguard in order to create a new project for Burton, which goes through the fact that we must make the company profitable". "The 26 stores that close Saturday to the public are stores that for ten years have not been profitable, we can not keep them," he detailed. The figure of 221 redundancies for 441 employees "is the maximum of the maximum, but I think we will be closer to 110 or 120" thanks to store sales, "for me the priority is to sell them with staff recovery," he said.


Regarding the 47 points of sale that the group does not close or does not seek to sell, the women's collections will disappear to "refocus on men" and the points of sale "will welcome other brands" than Burton of London.

  • Economy
  • Abolition of posts
  • Clothing
  • Dismissal