2023-07-28 08:38:37
By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 43 minutes ago, Just Updated
The group has 200,000 employees worldwide, including a quarter in France. STEPHANE MAHE / REUTERS
A binding agreement should be signed in September, “allowing the opening of an accelerated safeguard procedure in October”, specifies the group this Friday morning.
The French distributor Casino in financial difficulties announced on Friday that it had concluded a “agreement in principle” with “some of its main creditorson the recapitalization and restructuring offer from billionaires Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière backed by the British fund Attestor. This agreement in principle provides for the signing in September of a binding agreement in which the signatories undertake “to support and carry out any approach or action reasonably necessaryfor carrying out the restructuring.
An accelerated safeguard procedure for the group, which has 200,000 employees worldwide, including a quarter in France, is then planned.in October“. The acquiring trio will bring in 1.2 billion euros in new money and their plan provides for the reduction of nearly 5 billion euros of the group’s debt as well as the sale of activities in South America, where three quarters of the Casino employees. Creditors will have to vote to validate “proposed accelerated backup plansin December 2023 and which will then have to be approved by the Commercial Court. The restructuring of Casino’s debt must take place “during the first quarter of 2024“, further detailed the group originally established in Saint-Étienne.
Casino, strangled by a net debt of 6.4 billion euros at the end of 2022, had set a date for Thursday to find an agreement in principle with its creditors, who were to decide on the restructuring plan presented by the candidates. on the takeover, billionaires Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, backed by the British investment fund Attestor. This plan will lead to the massive dilution of the group’s current shareholders. As a result, its current parent company Rallye, controlled by the group’s CEO Jean-Charles Naouri and itself in debt to the tune of 3 billion euros, announced Thursday evening that it “would have no other realistic solution in the long term than the liquidation or cessation of activity».
As for Casino, its financial situation is critical. The group unveiled Thursday a net loss of 2.23 billion euros in the first half, due in particular to impairments. He unveiled Friday morning activity forecasts heavily revised downwards for the rest of the year. The day before, he had clarified that “given the legal steps still to be taken to implement the financial restructuring», «the situation to date presents an uncertainty“on his ability”to continue operating“. But he assured that he was not anticipating “no cash flow problem» by the end of 2023, provided that financial costs and debt maturities are frozen at the end of the conciliation period.
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