While the meetings are taking place at the Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring (Ciri), in Bercy, to try to find a solution to the restructuring of Casino’s debt in the next ten days, a letter from Lidl to one of the partners of the British fund Attestor created confusion on Tuesday.
In this letter, which our colleagues from World were able to navigate, Lidl shows expressions of interest for 600 Casino stores. This information caused a lot of reaction, while Attestor this weekend joined the offer of Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, who are now alone in the race to recapitalize Casino.
However, the two men have declared on several occasions in recent days that they make the sustainability of the group and the maintenance of employment one of their priorities. The group’s sustainability and employment are part of the offer assessment criteria required by the Casino’s management. These are also red lines raised by Bercy, not to mention the unions.
The situation has changed rapidly.
However, according to various sources, it appears that this letter from Lidl to Attestor dates from July 10, before we knew that the fund had joined Daniel Kretinsky’s offer. He was still officially in discussion with the Niel-Pigasse-Zouari trio, who also said they had never heard of the missive.
On the Attestor side, it is explained that Lidl has been in contact, but that there is currently no discussion. We remind you that in this Casino dossier, the fund’s commitment is long-term. A source familiar with the matter says that if Attestor agreed to discuss Lidl, during a “call”, it was on the assumption of bringing cash to back the trio’s offer, which he lacked.
Obviously, we don’t know what will happen to the Casino group in the coming months and years. Some sources are still considering a dismantlement. But in any case, this type of scenario of selling a store park to Lidl is not part, to this day, of the plan defended by Daniel Kretinsky, Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and Attestor.
Testador in a position of strength
This episode proves moreover, if it were still necessary, the importance that this fund has taken on. For several players in the case, it was he who tipped the match in favor of Daniel Kretinsky. The latter “had the intelligence to understand that it was necessary to treat creditors better,” estimates a source. He did so in his second offer, submitted last weekend. By giving them more space in his project, he won over Attestor, which made the other funds decide to follow them…
If he is described as a traitor by the entourage of the Niel-Pigasse-Zouari trio, whom he rejected to join Daniel Kretinsky’s offer, other actors in the file, more or less close to Attestor, believe that the British fund is the victim of a ” poor judgment” and that it is not “a vulture fund.
Among Attestor’s defenders, one of them takes as an example the case of Europcar, where the fund entered due to debt and where it later injected capital. Another tells how, in recent years, in France, Attestor has worked with good intelligence and in an “honest” way with French banks.
The French banks that, according to various sources, should end up validating Daniel Kretinsky’s plan. “They consider that this plan seems to hold,” we are told in particular.
This same actor thus explains that Daniel Kretinsky, by allying himself with the Attestor, has been awarded “a blocking minority”, the British fund that now owns around 25% of the distribution group’s debt. Verdict within ten days, the term given by Casino to “finalize an agreement in principle on the terms of the financial restructuring” of the group.
Source: BFM TV
