Olympique Lyonnais: salary cuts for "sporting actors" converted into shares of the OL Groupe

"Olympique Lyonnais (Ligue 1 Uber Eats) has proposed an innovative measure allowing all sporting actors (players, coaches, first-team staff, sporting management) to invest alongside all shareholders in the OL Groupe project. (...) OL's general management reached an agreement with some of the players in its professional groups, both men's and women's, which resulted, as had been proposed to them, in a conversion into shares of the OL Groupe of part of their compensation, representing between 5% and 25% of the salary, from February 2021 and up to June 2021," OL Groupe announced on 08/03/2021.

OL Groupe, the holding company that owns Olympique Lyonnais, has been strongly impacted by the economic crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, with revenues down 12% (to €271.6m) and a net loss of €36.5m at the end of the 2019-20 fiscal year. On 16/02/2021, OL Groupe presented its accounts for the first half of 2020-21 with revenues down 37% (to €123.3m) and negative net income of €50.6m.

OL management had been discussing for several weeks with its sporting players in order to find agreement to…