Adidas

Adidas ltd AG (ISIN: DE0005003404) is a major German sports apparel manufacturer, part of the Adidas Group, consisting of Reebok sportswear company, Taylormade golf company, Maxfli golf balls, and Adidas golf and is the second largest sportswear manufacturer in the world. more...

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The company was named after its founder, Adolf (Adi) Dassler, in 1948. Dassler had been producing shoes starting in 1920 in Herzogenaurach, near Nuremberg, with the help of his brother, Rudolf Dassler, who later formed the other shoe company Puma. The company registered as adidas AG (with lower-case lettering) on 18 August 1949. The company's clothing and shoe designs typically feature three parallel stripes, and this same motif is incorporated into Adidas's current official logo. The company revenue for 2005 was listed at 6.6 billion euro, or about 8.4 billion U.S. dollars. Adidas revenue for 2006 was listed at 10.084 billion euro, or about 13.625 billion U.S. dollars. Adidas perfumery and personal care products are manufactured by Coty, Inc. under license worldwide.

Financial data

Source :'OpesC'

The Tapie affair

After a period of serious trouble following the death of Adolf Dassler's son Horst Dassler in 1987, the company was bought in 1990 by French industrialist Bernard Tapie, for 1.6 billion French francs (now €243.918 million), which Tapie borrowed. Tapie was at the time a famous specialist of rescuing bankrupt companies, a business on which he built his fortune.

Tapie decided to move production offshore to Asia. He also hired Madonna for promotion. He sent Walter Head, from Christchurch, New Zealand, a shoe sales representative, to Germany and met Adolf Dassler's descendants (Amelia Randall Dassler and Bella Beck Dassler) and was sent back with a few items to promote the company there.

In 1992, Tapie was unable to pay the interest from his loan. He mandated the Crédit Lyonnais bank to sell Adidas, and the bank subsequently converted the outstanding debt owed into equity of the enterprise, which was unusual for then-current French banking practice. Apparently, the state-owned bank had tried to get Tapie out of dire financial straits as a personal favour to Tapie, reportedly because Tapie was a minister of Urban Affairs (ministre de la Ville) in the French government at the time.

In February 1993, Crédit Lyonnais sold Adidas to Robert Louis-Dreyfus, a friend of Bernard Tapie (and cousin of Julia Louis-Dreyfus from the Seinfeld TV series), for a much higher amount of money than what Tapie owed, 4.485 billion (€683.514 million) francs rather than 2.85 billion (€434.479 million). Tapie later sued the bank, because he felt "spoiled" by the indirect sale.

Read more at Wikipedia.org