“You don’t need hope to take action, nor do you need success to persevere”.
Sheikh Al Jaber undoubtedly had this quote from William of Orange in mind when he decided to
continue the fight against the liquidation of his group. The great businessman had experienced a
true descent into hell, notably with several rulings by the Court of cassation that had declared his
appeals inadmissible in 2023.
But determination is sometimes rewarded with success: in three rulings handed down on March
25, 2026, the Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation, four years later, overturned the
rulings issued by the Paris Court of Appeal on July 7, 2022, thereby allowing the group’s companies
to challenge the judicial liquidation that had been ordered by the Paris Commercial Court on June
25, 2021.
The defendants argued that the companies has no interest in challenging the conversion of its
reorganization proceedings into judicial liquidation, since the decisions rejecting its proposed
plan and ordering the total sale of its assets have become final.
The Supreme Court did not agree and judged that the companies, whose legal representative’s
functions are deemed not to have been interrupted due to the retroactive effect of the revocation
of the appointment of the ad hoc administrator designated to exercise its specific rights, have an
interest in having the lower Court declare the loss of legal basis of the judgment that
ordered its judicial liquidation.
The cards are now totally reshuffled: the liquidation and the sales of the assets are no longer final,
and anything is possible before the Paris Court of Appeals—which will have a new composition—
to which the case has been referred.
March 26,2026