This is a new crisis within the management of Atos. According to several sources close to the group, a senior manager of the IT services group opposed the sale of its historic IT fleet management business to Daniel Kretinsky. This is René Proglio, director for just over a year and, above all, president of the Atos accounts committee. According to our information, he expressed his opposition to the operation when it ended at the end of July. A few days later, he did not participate in the vote at the July 31 board meeting. “He said that he was on a plane heading to China,” several corroborating sources explain to us.
The decisive meeting of the board of directors on July 31 was called for that same morning, for the end of the afternoon. “The president of the council, Bertrand Meunier, organized it knowing that René Proglio could not be there,” says a source close to Atos. “He had even communicated his flight schedule so that the city council could organize and attend,” adds another source. Contacted, René Proglio did not respond to us.
According to one of his relatives, he was furious at being fired from the board of directors and made it known later. He would even have been pressured to resign from his position as director because he criticized the sale of a part of Atos to Daniel Kretinsky. He still sits there today. This situation creates disorder because he is the president of the Atos accounts committee. His support is all the stronger because he directed the French subsidiary of the auditing firm Arthur Andersen for twenty years.
Confrontation between Meunier and Proglio
The environment of the president of Atos does not have the same version of the events. “Being on a plane is a crazy pretext, it bothers someone close to Bertrand Meunier. René Proglio did not even give a delegation to vote.” Who deceived the other? For several months, a confrontation has been going on between the two men. The president of Atos suspects that René Proglio aspires to take his position. The latter complains privately of having been isolated on the board by Bertrand Meunier, who brought in former banker Jean-Pierre Mustier to frustrate him.
Officially, the board of directors voted in favor of the sale of IT services “unanimously of the members present,” according to Atos. According to several sources, another member of the board of directors, Caroline Ruellan, was also not comfortable with this operation. When contacted, she did not respond.
Among senior executives, the departure of CFO Nathalie Sénéchault is also causing rumors internally. Some consider her responsible for Atos’ poor financial communication around its results this summer. Others believe, on the contrary, that she stepped down because she did not want to assume the financial conditions of the sale of computer services to Daniel Kretinsky.
The general assembly is postponed
This is precisely what the activist fund CIAM, an Atos shareholder, openly criticized at the beginning of September. He considers this operation as a “gift” to the Czech businessman who recovers one billion euros in cash in subcontracting activities “to finance his restructuring,” the fund estimates in a letter to the group’s directors. It plans to vote against this sale at the general meeting of shareholders, which Atos intends to delay. Initially scheduled for this fall, it should be postponed, according to our information, until early 2024.
The pressure has increased a step since another Atos shareholder, the Alix AM fund, filed a complaint for “active and passive corruption.” In particular, he denounces the remuneration that the Czech businessman promised to CEO Nourdine Bihmane and Deputy CEO Diane Galbe. The figures of 25 million euros and 15 million euros, mentioned by Mediapart, are circulating. “These are objectives that could be doubled if the results of the division acquired by Daniel Kretinsky were better than expected,” explains a good expert on the subject. In the event of recovery from these activities, Atos will also receive part of the profits obtained by the buyer.
Source: BFM TV
