Intergamma and franchisee Bourellier again in court

A long-running dispute between Intergamma and its largest franchisee, the French Bourellier Group, is coming back to court. The do-it-yourself group accuses its franchise partner of having withheld information in a bonus case.

Fraud

The Bourellier Group operates 77 Gamma and Karwei stores in the Netherlands and Belgium, but has been fighting a dispute with its franchisor Intergamma for years. The latter allegedly wrongly kept bonuses it received from its suppliers for itself when they should actually benefit the franchisees. Bourellier claims to have been disadvantaged to the tune of 100 million euros.

In 2021, the Netherlands Arbitration Institute (NAI) ruled in favour of the franchisee, but Intergamma now says that the French company concealed important information at the time, which might have led to a different verdict. The court in Arnhem agrees, newspaper FD writes: the franchisee committed fraud and so the case must come before the NAI again. That will not happen until May 2025.