Their teams arrived on Friday from Prague to meet throughout the weekend. Daniel Kretinsky is expected to arrive in Paris early in the week for “a last chance meeting”, which should take place on Wednesday, according to a source close to Atos. It is “the der of ders”, adds another. The Czech businessman should then speak with Jean-Pierre Mustier, president of Atos.
Two months ago, the IT services group began renegotiating the sale of its historic IT fleet management activities to Daniel Kretinsky. The discussions have been going badly for a month. The billionaire twice agreed to increase his purchase price from 100 to 150 and then to 170 million euros for this branch that generates 5.4 billion euros of turnover, generates a margin of 1% and consumes a lot of cash.
“The operation has had a bad start, but it is not dead,” someone close to Atos wants to believe. The group has continued to increase its demands and is now asking Daniel Kretinsky for 500 million euros. “We wonder if Atos doesn’t want the operation to fail,” asks a person close to the negotiations. At the center of the discussions are now the guarantees of execution of the contract that neither Atos nor the employer want to assume. These risks of sanctions, in case of poor implementation of computer systems among its clients, weigh around 1,500 million euros in provisions.
The judicial process is getting closer
The risk of failure of the transaction is terrifying investors, who fear the opening of a judicial procedure, a conciliation, while Atos drowns under 4.8 billion euros of debt. Atos’ share price has halved since January 1. As a result, the value of your debt plummets. The loan of 500 million euros, which Atos must repay next November, fell by 65%. The other bonds worth 1.9 billion euros even fell by 75%! “It’s panic, all investors think that Atos will have to cancel part of its debt in its restructuring,” explains a small shareholder of the group.
French banks are also worried. All of them are at the forefront of an inevitable Atos debt restructuring. BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, Natixis and CIC have two loans: one of 1.5 billion euros that matures in January 2025 and a line of credit of 900 million euros that must be repaid in November 2025.
Cancel half of the debts
Last Tuesday a meeting was held between Atos, its creditors and the Industrial Restructuring Committee of the Ministry of Economy, as revealed by BFM Business. “Everything went wrong, the banks were furious because the sale to Daniel Kretinsky could fail,” explains a source familiar with the discussions. “This scenario will put the group against the wall.” Since that day the values of Atos’ debts have plummeted. “We wanted details about Atos’ options regarding dismantling, the sale to Kretinsky, the cybersecurity to Airbus or the rest to OnePoint,” says one of the group’s main bankers. “We left without a response.”
According to our information, banks are testing the resale of their debts on the market to evaluate their price. “Our loans have also lost 50% of their value,” says a banker. “We are entering a hellish spiral of loss of confidence.” Within the framework of a conciliation, they would have to abandon half of their loans, that is, more than one billion euros.
Source: BFM TV
