The Casino group, afflicted by debt problems and which announced in April that it was studying the possibility of opening a conciliation procedure with its creditors, “will extend the period of prior consultation” until May 23 at 5:00 p.m., according to a statement released this Tuesday. . “The final decision to request the opening of a conciliation procedure is subject to the approval of the Casino’s board of directors,” specifies the group, owed a sum of 6,400 million euros at the end of 2022, to which more than three billion in debt from the group’s parent company, Rallye.
This announcement comes as Thierry Blandinières, managing director of the InVivo group, which is the main shareholder of Teract, in line to take over Casino’s French business, said on Tuesday that “a conciliator would be appointed” on May 22 “along with to the bed of the group of origin Etienne.”We are entering the debt study phase” and “on May 22 a conciliator will be appointed”, explained Thierry Blandinières on Radio Classique, adding that “from there, surely we will have better visibility of the ‘Casino Debt Extension’ The conciliation procedure is an amicable procedure that should allow the company in crisis to reach an amicable agreement with its main creditors.
An alliance between Teract and the Czech Daniel Kretinsky
The distributor, which employs more than 50,000 people in France and 200,000 worldwide under many brands including Monoprix or Franprix, has been struggling to get out of debt for years, so far without success.
Since February, Casino has been officially analyzing a possible merger with Teract, whose majority shareholder is the agri-food giant InVivo and which has the founder of Free Xavier Niel and business banker Matthieu Pigasse around the table of its board of directors. At the end of April, the third largest supermarket chain in France, Intermarché, joined these discussions.
Daniel Kretinsky, already a 10% shareholder of Casino, also proposed on April 24 to inject 750 million euros into the group through a reserved capital increase of more than one billion euros in total. Teract CEO Moez-Alexandre Zouari recently invited the Czech billionaire to work together.
Source: BFM TV
