A domestic appliances venture followed, then something called “Heart Assistance” that was supposed to provide instant help to people with heart problems through a portable gadget that would summon an ambulance at the press of a button.
Mr. Tapie was convicted in 1981 for fraudulent advertising; the company had two ambulances, maybe, when it declared it had five.
At about the same time, Mr. Tapie was ordered by a French court to return four chateaus that he had acquired for a song from the fallen self-proclaimed emperor of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, by persuading him — falsely — that they were to be seized by French authorities.
Moving at speed in his personal and professional life — he had two children by a brief first marriage — Mr. Tapie specialized in rescuing and reselling troubled companies, from battery to bicycle manufacturers. He gradually built a fortune. The summit of his business career came in 1990 with the purchase of Adidas, the sporting goods company.
As in many of his business adventures, however, Adidas would come to haunt Mr. Tapie. A long legal saga involving the company ensued, including the sale of his majority stake to Credit Lyonnais in 1992, a lawsuit brought by Mr. Tapie against the bank alleging it had underpaid for the company, a payment to Mr. Tapie of $449 million awarded in 2008 and an order on appeal to repay that sum in 2017. The saga remained unresolved at the time of his death.