Arena company position concerning Laure Manaudou

The company Arena Italia S.p.A., also on behalf of the whole Arena Group, believes it is appropriate to state in a clear and undisputable manner its position with respect to the wide range of declaration and communication recently reported by the media concerning Laure Manaudou.

We are extremely disappointed of being informed, after tree days of a true media storm, and moreover not directly by the concerned people, but rather through the media, that the sponsorship contract mentioned several time in the relevant news in the last few days is indeed the contract that our Company signed with Laure Manaudou.

More precisely, it has been reported, by different media, in several occasion, that a sponsorship agreement was recently signed by Laure Manaudou, under absurd, alleged and not better specified psychological and physical pressure.

Arena is in a position to clearly state, after detailed reconstruction and careful analysis of the events, that the real facts and circumstances concerning the development of the contractual relationship between Laure Manaudou and the Company have been, intentionally and on purpose, manipulated, with the clear objective to generate a very significant damage to the image and the commercial reputation of the Company.
With respect to all the above, we want to firmly state that Arena has already taken all the necessary legal actions to protect its rights and reputation, both in front of civil and criminal courts, in Italy and in France, in order to claim and obtain the greatest compensation possible for any damage resulting out of this unreasonable and unlawful manipulation of the truth.

Moreover, we want to point out our greatest surprise and disappointment with respect to some of the news and statements reported by the media which are absolutely groundless, false and also outrageous.

Arena is a leading international group operating in the sporting goods field, with specific focus on water sports equipment and has made of its correct behaviour and ethical standards one of the key pillars of its business strategy in over thirty years of history.

As far as our professional relationship with Laure, we intend to firmly re-state here that we are absolutely proud of the fact that we have jointly assessed and shared with Laure Manaudou, the wish, the motivation and the commitment to prolong our sportive and professional cooperation beyond the time framework of the contract formerly in place, which was due to expire by the end of 2008, for another three year time, therefore until the end of 2011.

This because, since the very beginning of its competitive career, all the outstanding results achieved by Laure Manaudou were realized with the full support of Arena as technical sponsor.

In light of all the above, any statement, speculation and manipulation of the true development of the facts, aiming at attributing to Arena, either directly or indirectly, the use of psychological or physical pressure with the purpose of obtaining Laure Manaudou signature on such contractual prolongation, are absolutely false, pretentious and outrageous.

To the purpose of stating the real nature of the events in a fair, transparent and trustful way, we believe it is of the extreme importance to state once and for all that the extension of the contract convened between Arena and Laure Manadou on July 27th, 2007 has been discussed, in line with the former contracts, in the French language, carefully evaluated in all details and also further negotiated by Laure Manadou at the presence of an interpreter.
Such an interpreter has been specifically requested by Arena for two (2) main reasons, the first of which was to facilitate the communication with the General Manager of the Company, Mr. Alessandro Carpignano, while the second was to make sure that Laure could get a perfect and profound understanding of the terms and conditions of the contract.

Moreover, during our meeting, Laure Manaudou fairly informed us of the fact that the legal representation of the company Swimming Dream, which holds some of the image rights of the athlete, was recently transferred by Laure to her father.
This was communicated to us by Laure during the meeting, with also the clear and firm additional statement, released in front of all participants to the same meeting, that she had kept and retained all the legal and individual rights of representation and signature for the Company Swimming Dream.

This fact, which is also confirmed by the hand-written corrections made by Laure within the contract, whose corrections have been duly under-signed by both contracting parties for acknowledgement, is the clear and undisputable proof of the total and absolute good faith of both parties.

Moreover, both parties agreed on the opportunity to give the highest media impact and relevance to the announcement of such contractual prolongation, by postponing it to a more appropriate timing, just before the Olympic Games of Beijing.

Finally, it is important to underline the fact that, in spite of the technical sponsorship relationship existing between Arena and the swimming club La Presse based in Turin, where Laure has been trained in the last few months as well as, the mutual trust and respect for its management and technical staff, with particular reference to its President Mr. Marco Durante, Arena has never appointed nor has Arena engaged any member of such club to negotiate on its behalf the contractual prolongation with Laure Manadou, nor has Arena had any evidence that such a mandate was given by Laure Manadou for the same purpose.

We exclusively care about Laure Manadou’s sport results and about her immense talent. That is the reason why we have jointly decided that she will have to play a major role in the development of the new revolutionary swimsuit that Arena will launch in view of the next Olympic Games.

We truly believe that this, and only this, is our role. We wish and hope that Laure Manadou, as soon as she comes back from her deserved holidays, will promptly clarify, in the most constructive way, the role that her family members and legal advisor have in her professional decisions, as well as the commitment she is ready to undertake with the French Swimming Federation technical team, in charge of her future coaching and training, in order to achieve an outstanding preparation for a best in class performance in the next swimming competitions.