Bernard Tapie

Bernard Tapie, a flamboyant French business tycoon who raced cars, starred on television, served in parliament and owned one of the country’s premier football clubs, becoming an object of national fascination even as he faced repeated scandals and went to prison for a bribery scheme, has died aged 78. Raised...

Famed for his tan and bouffant hair, Bernard Tapie, who has died aged 78, was by far France’s most glamorous business tycoon: admired even by detractors for his derring-do. “Half Count of Monte Cristo, half Jean Valjean” (hero of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables), he “wrote his own legend”, says Le Figaro. “No one could dictate his conduct,” and his career “mirrored the contradictions and fractures in France’s own history”. For Le Monde, Tapie was simply the man “with a thousand lives”.

Controversial French businessman whose career was beset by scandal, including tax fraud and football match-fixing

Bernard Tapie, the flamboyant French business tycoon who raced cars, starred on television, served in parliament and owned one of the country’s premier soccer clubs, becoming an object of national fascination even as he faced repeated scandals and went to prison for a bribery scheme, died on Oct. 3 at 78. The cause was cancer, according to his family who told La Provence, a Marseille newspaper that he had owned since 2012.

Bernard Tapie, the former majority owner of Adidas, has passed away at the age of 78 after a years-long battle with cancer. In 1990, Tapie, a French industrialist, purchased Adidas after finding success turning around a number of struggling businesses. He was credited with saving the company from bankruptcy by among other steps, shifting manufacturing to Asia; recruiting Bob Strasser, the former chief of design at Nike; and changing the image of the brand that led to the popularity of the three stripes triangle.