Four candidates want to take over Luike Group without print editions
Grupo Luike is looking for an owner and it is expected to find one in the next few days. The dean of the motoring press in Spain, publisher of Autofácil, EVO Magazine, Todo Terreno and Fórmula Moto, is going through a transition process, after declaring itself a month and a half ago in insolvency proceedings and opening the deadline to submit takeover bids. As DIRCOMFIDENCIAL has learned, four people – legal or natural – have shown interest in acquiring business units of the group founded by Enrique Hernández-Luike.
The first to do so, and the one most likely to become the owner when the bankruptcy was declared, was its supplier Digital Green, a marketing agency located in Huesca. So much so that company sources told this newspaper at the time that the acquisition process was “very advanced”. The company specialised in digital support for the media wanted to take over the digital editions of Autofácil and Fórmula Moto and the subrogation of six of the thirty workers who make up the staff for 70,000 euros, a figure that outrages the staff, according to sources close to the company.
Since the presentation of this proposal published by this newspaper, three new interested parties have entered the scene, whose identities and purchase intentions are unknown. The insolvency administrator has already submitted to the competent commercial court a concrete proposal to relaunch the Luike Group in a new phase, which is expected to be without print editions, since the common denominator of the aspiring owners is that none of them wants to keep the magazines in physical outlets.
The question that most worries the staff is which business units the new owner wants to acquire and, consequently, how many employees they envisage for the new project and how many, on the other hand, they will have to lay off. Since the insolvency of the company was declared, the staff has been suffering delays in their payments and some of them have put the case in the hands of lawyers.
The new owner of Grupo Luike – or of specific business units – will have the mission of refloating a company that in 2021 lost 369,000 euros, with a turnover of 1.9 million and a financial liability of 1.2 million and to reorient a strategy that was interrupted after the death of the founder in February this year.
