Apparently, the deal was just incompatible for the moment. It was May 2022 and venture capital and in general investment professionals started to react Macroeconomic storm in the United States to be much more conservative in their operations. Despite this, the entrepreneur pep gomez At just 29, he announced the second big goal of his career, the deal to sell his company. scooter sharing company Relax to the Canadian background Lithium House For 100 million dollars. But what at the time seemed like an unquestionable success was actually the beginning of the end: the Canadian firm backed down, the operation ended in court, and the lack of funds, according to what has been learned as El Periódico de Catalunya from the Prensa Ibérica group, has led to the Catalan ‘startup’. bankruptcyspend months without pay, non-payment lawsuit inside Italyand withdraw their vehicles from almost all of Spain.
“The problems started in 2022,” says one of its partners in the Transalpine country. Founded in 2018, Reby had grown in the heat of the year. The ‘explosion’ of shared mobility with a business volume of approximately 15 million euros, approximately 70 employees and a fleet of 4,000 scooters until October 2021 Barcelona, rod, Seville, tarragon, terrassa And Zaragosa (inside Spain), And bergamot, bleak, Florence, Lecce, Naples And taranta (inside Italy).
There they went hand in hand k cityA Neapolitan technology company Landing in a new municipality or growth in a city where they are already executed pays off once. By his own account this italian sme Thanks to this activity, which is at the center of his business and fully employs 26 employees, he earned an average of 150,000 Euros per month. Until Reby suddenly stopped paying. “They told us to calm down, they were about to come. closing a funding round and they can pay ”, recalls a commercial executive of K-City, pepe morelli. And the operation came, but the money did not come.
buyer response
As published in ‘Diari Ara’ in October last year, canadian background He withdrew after making the first payment and Reby had reported them. United States of America to force them to go all the way. Reasons for withdrawal Lithium House they are unclear: on the one hand, it is argued that the fund will fall victim to the general decline in stock markets and run out of liquidity; On the other hand, he will feel compelled to close the deal before he has all the information about the company.
In this sense, the resources involved in the operation, Reby Spanish investors They came under a lot of pressure. pep gomez, the founder of the company, so that the deal can be closed as soon as possible. “We had a vision of the facts, we made decisions based on that information, and then it turned out to be distorted,” they say now.
bankruptcy management
In any case, what surprised them the most, both for themselves and their Italian partners, management of the bankruptcy situation: Gómez’s public speech is when he promised Morelli he would do everything possible to pay off his debts while insisting that he had been out of the company for months or plans to pay while holding the Canadian fund until this year. According to these sources, he had a message from last summer, and it was pretty clear that it wasn’t. They don’t explain it either. expansion strategy It is so aggressive even on accounts in such a sensitive state that it has minimal three months without paying workers without thinking of signing up bankruptcy or that you didn’t touch personal legacy (assuming bulky, given the millionaire sale) firefirst company) to solve the problem.
Morelli, “The debt in Italy is at most 2 million euros, how can he not pay us?” he asks. After much persecution, K-City finally decided to file a lawsuit in January. Reby Italy inside Milan court and the judge just a month ago decided to give the company a little more time to settle the matter.
El Periódico de Catalunya tried to contact both the entrepreneur and the law firm representing Reby’s new owners to learn about the company’s status in Spain or the US case, but was unsuccessful. Although we have not received any information on this, everything seems to be not going well here: according to referenced sources, debts to distributors in the national market they go much further Italy there is even in Chinese. Therefore, it is not surprising that the company has gradually ceased operations since the beginning of the year. Barcelona, Seville, terrassa, tarragon And ZaragosaAccording to ‘Heraldo de Aragón’, this is where the local police started to transfer vehicles to the warehouse.
Source: Informacion
James Sean is a writer for “Social Bites”. He covers a wide range of topics, bringing the latest news and developments to his readers. With a keen sense of what’s important and a passion for writing, James delivers unique and insightful articles that keep his readers informed and engaged.