A major ambition of B&B Hotels, led by Jérôme Pinault, has fallen apart: according to Ouest-France, the team had hoped to sign Mark Cavendish and to partner with the city of Paris, but both contracts have disappeared.

Pinot told the riders and staff on Friday that they were free to sign with a new team, but strictly speaking, if a team did not apply for a professional team license by October 15, UCI rules gave them the freedom to break the contract.

This did not bode well for the French teams, and they had to ask for a special extension of the deadline of November 30 to secure their budgets; in mid-November, Pinault said he had meetings with five companies and was waiting to hear back at the end of last month.

Those "very serious leads" have not come to fruition, and it appears that the ambitious project Pinault formed with his brother Sebastian in 2018 may collapse altogether.

Two weeks ago, Pinault admitted as much to L'Equipe, saying, "We are behind schedule, but I will keep believing until the last minute of the last day. It could be the beginning of something, it could be the end of everything."

The team's first race in the last week of the year was the "Ouvertime" race.

According to Ouest-France, the plan to go after big companies such as Carrefour, Amazon, and the City of Paris, with Mark Cavendish, scared off some smaller sponsors and caused a major budget headache when negotiations broke down.

Pinot planned a scaled-down team with a similar budget to the previous year, between 5 and 7 million euros. However, from the message of letting the players and staff go, it appears that this project may fall apart.

Riders such as top scorers Luca Mozzato, Axel Laurance, Pierre Barbier, and Franck Bonamur may move to other teams. According to some reports, Laurance is in talks with Ineos Grenadiers. Mozzato is rumored to be in talks with Arkea Samsic, and Total Energy is an option for the French rider.