2023-12-18 15:34:55
What if this was soon the end of a one hundred and twenty-five year old story? Some employees of the Casino group, who marched in the streets of Saint-Étienne on Sunday, fear it, and the inter-union expects a lot from a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, December 19 to find out more about the future of a company in great difficulty financial. Takeover offers should be presented to them.
Casino was placed in the so-called accelerated safeguard procedure at the end of October in order to implement the restructuring of its enormous debt. A consortium of buyers is led by billionaires Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière. The most pessimistic fear a sale of the distribution giant, synonymous with the disappearance of a brand intimately linked to the life of the city where it was created in 1898.
► 1898: the start of a commercial saga
Since 1860, the former Casino lyrique de Saint-Étienne, a café chantant, has been transformed into a grocery store, while having retained its original name. The premises, rue des Jardins, were taken over in 1892 by a local merchant, Geoffroy Guichard, who founded the Société des Magasins du Casino in 1898.
Three years later, the entrepreneur created a distributor brand, in the name of Casino, the first of its kind in France. Bread, oil, liqueurs, the products are manufactured by its own factories. Branches were developed in the region, Casino’s expansion also included an IPO in 1910.
► 1931: the inauguration of the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium
In 1920, the company also created a sports club for its employees, the Casino Sports Association, the future Saint-Étienne Sports Association (ASSE). Footballers play in green and white, the colors of Casino. The group rented land from the association where a stadium would be built, inaugurated on September 13, 1931.
The enclosure takes the name of the company’s creator, Geoffroy Guichard, who has just ceded control to his children. The founding boss died in 1940.
► 1948: the launch of self-service
On a study trip to North America, Casino managers observed a new successful model: self-service, with refrigerated cabinets. The concept is implemented in a first store, in Saint-Étienne, then generalized.
Casino continued its development by changing scale: it opened its first supermarket in 1960 in Grenoble, then its first hypermarket, a Géant Casino, in 1970 in Marseille.
► 1992: merger with Rallye
Historically established in Brittany and recently bought by Jean-Charles Naouri, the mass distribution group Rallye merged in 1992 with Casino. It notably brings it 232 supermarkets. In return, Rallye holds 29% of the capital of Casino.
This is the start of a forced acquisition policy. Between 1996 and 1999, Monoprix, Franprix, Leader Price, Spar and Vival fell into his hands. Casino is also establishing itself abroad: in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Brazil.
► 2005: Jean-Charles Naouri becomes CEO
Having become a majority shareholder of Casino in 1998, Jean-Charles Naouri became its CEO in 2005. Here is the former senior civil servant, former chief of staff of the socialist Pierre Bérégovoy, who became one of the heavyweights in distribution in France.
With him, the investment policy continues with, for example, the acquisition of Naturalia, a chain of organic stores, of Cdiscount, an online sales site, or the creation of a photovoltaic power plant.
2023: placement under safeguard
In 2022, the Casino group employs 200,000 people worldwide, including 50,000 in France. But its growth has come at the cost of complex financial arrangements and heavy debt, which amounts to 6.4 billion euros, an amount which becomes unsustainable as interest rates rise.
The group also posted a net loss of 2.23 billion euros in the first half of 2023. In October, the Paris commercial court opened a so-called accelerated safeguard procedure to allow the group to implement the restructuring. of his debt. For the moment, only Auchan and Intermarché have formalized an application for the takeover of the entire store network.
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