Everyone is ready to rob Casino. Hoping to pull off the heist of the century, players will sit around the table for one of the biggest poker games in French capitalism. The owner of the place, CEO Jean-Charles Naouri opens the doors of his forced and constrained empire to them. His empire is crumbling under a debt of 9,000 million euros and his supermarkets continue to suffer. The casino needs cash and a new industrial breath.
To save face, he initiated two conciliations under the auspices of the Commercial Court. One in Casino to restructure its debt of 6,400 million euros. And one in Rallye, his personal company with which he controls his empire. He is also in debt to the tune of 3 billion euros. A battle of at least four months with the French banks (BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Natixis and HSBC) and the buyers who want to take the bet. The receiver Marc Sénéchal is proposed to play the role of croupier. He will deal the good and bad chips to this string of hungry actors: Moez Zouari, Xavier Niel and Matthieu Pigasse on one side, Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit De Lacharrière on the other, at the end of the table the ulcerated bankers and the head of the BNP, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé in the position of matador.
The smartest, Thierry Cotillard, preferred not to sit at the table. The head of the Musketeers, who oversees Intermarché brands in particular, reached a “solo” deal before the settlement was opened. He has just signed a check for 1.1 billion euros to buy 180 hypermarkets and supermarkets in France, with a turnover of around 1 billion euros.
For Naouri, the party is over
He is also a good counterpoint to the CEO of Casino. Anyone who always has a card up their sleeve and loves this kind of setback, bring cash to calm things down with their banks. His trick: multiply alliances to let his attackers kill each other. “Naouri juggles and plays with everyone to gain time,” explains a French fortune who knows him well. With the sole objective of avoiding bankruptcy at all costs.
But he waited too long. “He will lose everything: control of Casino and his shares that are no longer worth anything,” even admits one of his relatives. At most he will try to maintain a position of honorary president. He drags with him his partners, his investors and his banks. “Naouri has planted us all!” Sums up one of them. His hunting record is impressive: the Baud family that Franprix took away in the 90s, the Houzé that Monoprix took away ten years later and also the Brazilian Diniz who had to release GPA in Latin America. More recently, Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière have also been admitted as novices.
The Pirates
From today the last part of Jean-Charles Naouri is reproduced. It started in early February when Casino started talks with the Teract group to merge their activities in France. First your brands: Casino, Franprix, Monoprix, Jardiland, Gamm Vert. But, above all, the 190 agricultural cooperatives of InVivo, owner of Teract, had to supply this new group to make it a specialist in fresh products. Its boss, Moez Alexandre Zouari, is the first franchisee of the Casino. He knows his CEO, Jean-Charles Naouri, well, but the two men are wary. “Zouari bought the Casino stores that were not working and made them profitable,” one of his relatives mocks. He hit him several times. The same caution of the Sioux in the Naouri environment that sweeps away the idea of a form of “succession”. In this negotiation where psychology has its place, it is rather the son who seeks to kill the father.
The trio of pirates felt the good hit. “Zouari is the only buyer”, we used to hear among his relatives. A month ago, when Casino posted poor first-quarter results, Teract and its owner, InVivo, fell apart. One wanting to speed up negotiations to win the day, the other preferring to stall. “It’s Dallas!” sighs one of the protagonists. Then the negotiations got out of hand. The creditors were furious. “Zouari’s plan is useless, it is not with short circuits that they will reimburse us!” Annoys one of them.
the relentless
Naouri then threw the top card of his deck: Daniel Kretinsky. The Czech businessman, however, proposes to fire him by taking control of Casino thanks to a capital increase of 750 million euros. Secretly, he intends to unite CDiscount, a subsidiary of the group, and Fnac Darty, of which he is the largest shareholder, to create a real competitor to Amazon in France. After having praised the qualities of the Teract project for three months, Casino presents “the only offer that really exists: Kretinsky’s”, is heard in the group’s environment. A first change of foot to up the ante for the “pirates” Zouari-Niel-Pigasse. Jean-Charles Naouri is also concerned with taking care of his future partners by trying to bring them together, an industrial project and a financial offer.
Daniel Kretinsky perseveres and has strong teeth. He had already tried to ally himself with Jean-Charles Naouri in 2019. He was about to help him pay an installment when the CEO closed the door in his face. “Daniel was fooled once, not twice,” explains a good connoisseur of the man who made his fortune in gas in Eastern Europe. At that moment, Naouri turned around to throw himself into the arms of a friend: Marc Ladreit De Lacharrière.
old friend betrayed
His “friend of thirty years” is also disappointed. He was the first to help Jean-Charles Naouri in the early 1990s. Pierre Bérégovoy’s former chief of staff then created his company Euris and lacked funds. It was Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière who helped him through the Industrial Mutual Bank (BMI), in which his company Fimalac was a shareholder. When the CEO asked him about it in 2019, he did not hesitate and invested 230 million euros in his personal company, Rallye, which controls Casino. He also believed in his beautiful words. But he lost everything.
His representative on the Casino’s board of directors, Thomas Piquemal, resigned a week ago before the conciliation procedure was triggered. To avoid “conflicts of interest,” he secures one in Fimalac’s entourage. In reality, Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière is furious with Jean-Charles Naouri and has been thinking about joining Daniel Kretinsky’s project for several weeks. Around the negotiating table, the two betrayed men ruminate and prepare their revenge. The billionaire is willing to invest 150 million euros to try to recover. The two investors have a single objective: to dismantle the Casino to recover the maximum amount of money.
ulcerated banks
At this point, they are followed by French banks. They have a debt of almost 3,000 million euros in Casino and another 2,000 million euros in the parent company Rallye. Since last summer, they have been asking the group to refocus on its French activities, BFM Business has revealed. They have been waiting for several years for the CEO to put their affairs in order. Not much has been done other than a few small sales, such as Leader Price or Greenyellow, far from what is really at stake in financial terms.
Unfortunately, they abandoned it when the Casino’s business activity stagnated. “For a long time we supported the group, because its brands worked and covered our loans, explains the manager of a group bank. But today, Casino is suffering and we risk losing everything”.
The “Casino” file went through the “special affairs” departments of Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas and Natixis, these teams that manage companies in the process of restructuring. According to our information, some have already taken significant loan loss provisions, which they have partly waived. Les créanciers poussent à un démantèlement en douceur: “After a recentrage in France, a vente de l’Amérique latine et de CDiscount, he rests a « petit Casino », ironically a banker. Naouri is going to lose control, c’est la end of story”.
the sheriff
Buyers want to take advantage of it. But the third and most powerful creditor of Casino: BNP Paribas pulled their ears. Its managing director, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, will weigh heavily at the negotiating table. “He is the sheriff of the restructuring, laughs a source close to one of the two buyers. He asked everyone to respect Jean-Charles Naouri”. These two finance inspectors support each other. The CEO of Casino has long been very close to the emblematic former boss of BNP Paribas, Michel Pèbereau, spiritual father of Jean-Laurent Bonnafé. But the most powerful banker in Europe is also cautious. Like all the actors, he wonders if the Casino CEO won’t try to play some more. They all have a single fear: that Jean-Charles Naouri will send his group to the safeguard procedure. And plant everyone another year.
Source: BFM TV
