1855.com: conspiracy or cock-up?

The recent liquidation of French merchant 1855.com raises a lot of questions – not least why it kept trading for so long – leading Jim Budd, the man behind the blog Les 5 du Vin, to suspect a conspiracy.

Emeric Sauty de Chalon. Credit: Heracles

1855.com, known as Héraclès since September 2014, has been a notorious non-deliverer of wine bought en primeur, with complaints dating back to 2002.

Despite the scale of grievance – “11,000 clients fleeced to the tune of over €40 million”, to quote Budd – the French fraud office, the Répression des Fraudes, failed to act.

“I think there is a conspiracy in terms of high-level protection,” Budd told the drinks business.

“How else can you explain that a company with so many lawsuits against it, that has failed to supply customers for so many years, had no action taken against it?”

He pointed out that the fraud squad can act fast if it wants to, pouncing on the Mâcon-based winemaker Jean-Marie Guffens in 2001, only for all charges to be dropped in 2010.

1855.com was founded by Emeric Sauty de Chalon and Fabien Hyon in 1995, and according to La Revue du Vin de France the idea behind it was; “original, but risky: sell the great Bordeaux primeurs by catalogue, collect the customers’ money, wait a year and a half, and then buy the bottled wine as soon as it became available.”

This wheeze of shorting the market went spectacularly wrong in 2005 when feverish anticipation of that year’s vintage boosted prices of the ’03 and ’04 by 20%. By the time the top wines of 2005 were bottled their prices had jumped by over 50%.

Speaking to the drinks business Budd said he would like to see a proper investigation into the dealings of Sauty de Chalon and Hyon. “Whether they’ll be prosecuted, who knows, but it seems to me clear that they had protection at a high level. It may or may not be coincidence that Jean-Pierre Meyers was a shareholder,” he said.

Meyers, the son-in-law of the L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, reportedly invested up to €10 million in the company. One of the biggest unanswered questions is why the Tribunal de Commerce de Paris approved the rescue package for 1855.com in November and allowed the pair “to

Fabien Hyon. Credit: Jimsloire.blogspot.com

continue to fleece their unfortunate clients,” to quote Budd.

The refinancing deal from a Luxembourg-based group, PLF1, covered just €2.5m – a fraction of the company’s total debts. It later transpired that whoever made that meagre pledge to the court did not even work for PLF1. Meanwhile instead of long-awaited bottles of Lafite, minor creditors were offered basic Bordeaux Supérieur as compensation.

While Budd has followed the 1855.com saga since 2010, he credits the Bordeaux-based lawyer, Hélène Poulou, for finally closing the company down. Poulou is representing 385 clients who are owed around €5m, excluding damages. When asked if Budd was right about his conspiracy theory, she said: “I tend to agree.”