Legal & Institutional – Page 2
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Görtz’s insolvency proceedings are over, CK Technology is the new owner
A long period of uncertainty may have come to an end for the Hamburg-based shoe retailer Görtz with the completion of insolvency proceedings and a new owner. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, the district court of Hamburg has declared that all proceedings were over, with all debts registered ...
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India to introduce new quality standards for footwear from July 1
The Indian government has decided to go ahead with plans to introduce from July 1 new mandatory quality standards for footwear. However, companies with annual revenues of less than 500 million rupee will only have to adapt from Jan. 1, 2024, while shoemakers with annual sales of less than INR ...
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Rockport files for bankruptcy again
Forty years after introducing DresSports, considered the first classic dress shoe with a rubber sole, The Rockport Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 15 for the second time in five years. The petition lists some $99.71 million in funded debt obligations and more than $63.1 million ...
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Allbirds faces class action for alleged false and misleading information
On April 14, Bernstein Liebhard, a U.S. law firm specializing in securities litigation and corporate governance, said that a securities class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of investors who purchased Allbirds’ shares. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District ...
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Kazakh shoe prices set to rise due to mandatory labeling
Mandatory origin labeling of shoes came into force in Kazakhstan on April 1, despite criticisms by small retailers. Market players had urged the authorities to delay the reform, which has already been postponed for almost a year, or to make the labelling voluntary.In the last week of March, a significant ...
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How a group of Polish shoemakers is seeking to relaunch their industry
Created in 2019, Polska Grupa Producentów Obuwia (PGPO) is a proactive grouping of more than 50 Polish shoemakers largely based in the southern province of Malopolskie, the country’s main footwear cluster, aiming to promote their industry which has been badly hit by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. ...
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About 400 Turkish footwear factories were destroyed in February’s earthquakes
Some 400 footwear factories were destroyed in the cluster of Antakya during the two earthquakes, with respective magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.7, that hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on Feb. 6. 2023, according to Berke Içten, the chairman of the association of Turkish footwear manufacturers, TASD. The plants represent ...
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San Marina goes into liquidation
The French footwear retailer San Marina has been put into compulsory liquidation by a Marseille-based commercial court, leading to some 650 job losses in 163 stores. On Feb. 20, the court stated that no serious relaunch project had been put forward and that it had ordered the company to immediately ...
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Go Sport France and Kookaï go into receivership
Go Sport France and Kookaï have been placed into receivership as some French retailers continue to suffer from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and competition from online businesses. Meanwhile, Pimkie is expected to be sold soon with the loss of about 500 jobs. On Feb. 2, 2022, a Grenoble-based ...
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France introduces new anti-greenwashing rules
As part of its legislative arsenal to combat climate change, the French government has now introduced the next stage of its anti-greenwashing legislation, effective January 1, 2023. The new rules are a major step in controlling advertising claims on carbon offsetting and carbon neutrality, following laws that came into effect ...
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EU court rules that Amazon may be liable for sale of counterfeit Louboutin shoes
Amazon has been dealt a blow after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the U.S. online retailer may be liable for alleged intellectual property breaches by advertising counterfeit Louboutin shoes on its store. Two lower courts in Luxembourg and Belgium had referred a case ...
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Amazon, EU reach deal to end antitrust investigation
The European Commission said it has made commitments offered by Amazon legally binding under European Union antitrust rules, allowing to resolve competition concerns over the U.S. online retailer’s use of non-public marketplace seller data and possible bias in granting sellers access to its Buy Box and Prime program. In July ...
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San Marina placed into receivership
The French footwear retailer San Marina was placed under controlled administration, or receivership, on Sept. 22 at its request by a Marseille-based commercial court. San Marina employs 673 people in 163 stores in France. The so-called observation period of the receivership is set to last until March 23, 2023, ...
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Görtz and Surf4Shoes file for bankruptcy amid uncertainty, soaring inflation
Görtz and Surf4Shoes are among the latest companies caught in a wave of bankruptcies that appears to be gathering pace in Germany. Heightened consumer uncertainty, sky-rocketing inflation and rising energy prices are seen as the main destabilizing factors, as the war in Ukraine rages and the European Union’s sanctions against ...
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How the exodus out of Russia is creating opportunities for locals
Western footwear retailers that pulled out from the Russian market over the past few months in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sold products worth 51.2 billion rubles (€911m) in the country in 2021, estimated Chestny Znak, a Russian regulator supervising the labelling of fashion products on the domestic ...
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EU to use trade agreements to promote sustainability
The European Commission said that it took ”a major step in making EU trade greener, fairer and more sustainable” thanks to a new plan to enhance the contribution of trade agreements in protecting the climate, environment and labor rights worldwide. In a communication on “The power of trade partnerships: together ...
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EU proposes new consumer rights on sustainability and a ban on greenwashing
The European Commission is proposing to amend the European Union Consumer Rights Directive to oblige traders to provide consumers with information on products’ durability and reparability with the aim of empowering consumers for the green transition. The measure is one of many included in a wider package called the European ...
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Italian self-assessment ESG program to start beta trials
A software package allowing the self-assessment of companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) performances is scheduled to be rolled out for beta tests at several Italian companies over the coming weeks. The indicative number of companies involved in the trials could be four to six, according to the developers of ...
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Brazil renews footwear export program for 2 years
Abicalçados, the Brazilian footwear association, and ApexBrasil, the Brazilian agency for the promotion of exports and investments, signed the renewal of a two-year agreement to promote Brazilian footwear. The program simply called Brazilian Footwear was launched more than two decades ago. Under the agreement, the parties will invest 35.45 ...
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C-Suite interview: Covid-19 has masked the surge of regional integration in Asia-Pacific
In an exclusive interview with Shoe Intelligence, William Wong, the founder and head of the Hong Kong-based footwear company Goddess International, and the representative of the Confederation of International Footwear Association (CIFA), sheds light on the impact of regional integration in Asia-Pacific, the growing role of the region in design ...