The deal paused due to a momentary mismatch in expectations. It was May 2022 when venture capital and investment professionals, reacting to the macroeconomic storm in the United States, began to move more conservatively. Despite this, entrepreneur Pep Gomez, at 29, announced the second major milestone of his career: selling his company. The scooter-sharing startup Relax looked set to be acquired by Lithium House, a Canadian-backed firm, for 100 million dollars. What appeared to be a clear success at the time instead signaled trouble ahead: the Canadian backer balked, the deal unraveled in court, and a cash crunch led to months of nonpayment, lawsuits in Italy, and a withdrawal of vehicles from nearly all of Spain, according to El Periódico de Catalunya, part of the Prensa Ibérica group.
The trouble line started in 2022, according to a partner based in Italy. Reby, founded in 2018, had grown rapidly during the shared-mobility boom, routing around a business volume of roughly 15 million euros, with about 70 employees and a fleet of 4,000 scooters through October 2021 in cities such as Barcelona, Seville, Tarragona, Terrassa, and Zaragoza in Spain, and Bergamo, Bologna, Florence, Lecce, Naples, and Taranto in Italy.
There, the partnerships formed with K-City, a Neapolitan tech firm, and growth in new municipalities proved lucrative. By Gomez’s account, this Italian SME relied on the activity at the heart of the business, fully employing 26 people and earning around 150,000 euros per month. Then Reby unexpectedly stopped paying. A commercial executive from K-City, Pepe Morelli, recalls, “They told us to stay calm while a funding round was about to close, and that money would arrive.” The deal did proceed, but funds never did.
buyer response
According to an October report published by Diari Ara, the Canadian backer withdrew after making the first payment, prompting a response from Reby in the United States to pursue the full transaction. The reasons for the withdrawal from Lithium House remained unclear: some argued the fund was hit by a broader stock-market pullback and liquidity strains, while others suggested pressure to finalize the deal before having full visibility of the company.
Reby’s Italian investors faced mounting pressure as the operation stretched on. Gomez urged speed to close the deal, insisting the team had a clear understanding of the facts and that decisions were based on that information, even as those facts later appeared distorted. The situation began to reveal cracks in the strategy and execution.
bankruptcy management
Ultimately, the most surprising element for both the Spanish and Italian partners was how the bankruptcy process was handled. Gomez publicly promised Morelli he would do everything possible to settle debts, insisting he had stepped back from daily operations months earlier, while maintaining that Canadian funds would arrive later in the year. Sources indicate a message from the prior summer suggested otherwise. The expansion strategy appeared overly aggressive, even while accounts were in a precarious state, leaving workers unpaid for at least three months and raising questions about whether any bankruptcy protections had been activated or if personal assets might be at risk given a high-stakes sale.
Morelli asked pointedly how a debt of as much as 2 million euros in Italy could go unpaid. After sustained pressure, K-City decided to pursue legal action in January, taking Reby Italy to the Milan court. A judge granted a brief extension a month ago to attempt settlement.
The Periódico de Catalunya attempted to reach Gomez and the law firm representing Reby’s new owners to learn more about the company’s status in Spain and the U.S. case, but those efforts went unanswered. While no official statements had been released, the circulating information suggested debts to distributors in the national market extended into Italy and even China. The narrative points to a gradual withdrawal of operations since the start of the year in Barcelona, Seville, Terrassa, Tarragon, and Zaragoza, with local authorities reportedly moving vehicles to storage facilities in line with regional coverage.