Court docket paperwork present the corporate that runs the Only for Laughs comedy competition owes practically $22.5 million to collectors.
Groupe Juste pour rire Inc. introduced Tuesday that it was looking for creditor safety and cancelling this yr’s competition in Montreal, and stated Wednesday that the Toronto occasion can be getting the axe too — at the very least briefly.
The papers filed in Quebec’s Superior Court docket present Juste pour rire owes $16.6 million to the Nationwide Financial institution of Canada.
It additionally owes practically $2 million to the Enterprise Growth Financial institution of Canada and greater than $2.5 million to the Societe de developpement des entreprises culturelles, a Quebec authorities company.
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A spokesman for the corporate declined to touch upon the monetary state of affairs.
Juste pour rire introduced Tuesday that it had laid off 75 staff — roughly 70 per cent of its workforce — because it appears to restructure.
The corporate says it hopes the festivals will resume in 2025 as soon as it has completed restructuring the enterprise.
The occasion in Montreal usually occurs in July, and the Toronto competition had been scheduled for September.
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Juste pour rire blamed its monetary woes on quite a lot of elements, together with the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and the altering leisure trade, although court docket data present a bailiff seized greater than $800,000 in property from the corporate final week after it didn’t make a court-ordered cost to a former worker.
That worker just isn’t on the listing of debtors filed in court docket.
That listing does embody Equipe Spectra, a Montreal competition producer that’s owed greater than $611,000; and Bell Canada, which is owed greater than $237,000. Bell Canada owns a 51 per cent stake in Juste pour rire with occasion promoter Evenko.
Evenko and Equipe Spektra are each a part of Groupe CH — an organization headed by Geoff Molson, who sits on the board of Juste pour rire.