Difficult times at Cirque du Soleil, which recently laid off 30 people in Montreal and which is ending two shows in the United States.
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“Slight adjustments affected approximately 30 employees in Montreal,” where nearly 1,000 people work, the Quebec company said in an email. The job cuts took place at the end of November.
The Cirque also announced the end of two shows of its subsidiary Blue Man Group: one in New York, presented for 34 years, and the other in Chicago, on view for 27 years.
“Despite all our efforts, we must admit that we have reached a certain limit in these two cities with regard to the demand for show tickets,” Cirque CEO Stéphane Lefebvre wrote in a note in November. internal obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The last performance in Chicago was on January 5 and the last in New York will be on February 2.
“The time has come for Blue Man to explore new markets, starting with Orlando starting in April,” added Mr. Lefebvre.
“The decision to thank colleagues is never taken lightly,” he assured.
Cirque acquired Blue Man in 2017.
Nothing for small suppliers
On the other hand, two subsidiaries of the company were placed in bankruptcy at the end of last month.
These companies were created as part of the restructuring that allowed Cirque to avoid bankruptcy in 2020. A group of the company’s secured creditors, led by the Toronto firm Catalyst Capital, then took control.
“Companies do not have assets and have liabilities that had not been assumed by the buyer […] in October 2020. No distribution to creditors is planned in these bankruptcies,” the firm EY, which is acting as controller in this case, indicated on Wednesday.
“It was already established when these companies were created that they would eventually go bankrupt, once certain legal issues relating to the 2020 restructuring were resolved,” EY said.
More than $32 million lost
According to the list of creditors, the two subsidiaries had debts of more than $32 million, including nearly $477,000 in severance pay not paid to former Cirque employees.
More than 1,000 companies are among the creditors, including several Quebec SMEs. Some of them lost a few thousand dollars due to the Cirque’s insolvency, others more than $100,000.
–With Philippe Langlois, QMI Agency
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