2023-10-16 17:07:46
It is a picture from better times that Thierry Breton shows in autumn 2019 in Angers in western France at the inauguration ceremony of the new Atos test center for supercomputers. After more than ten years at the helm of the IT group, the Frenchman viewed the investment as a contribution to securing Europe’s leading role in the field of high-performance computers. Euphoria spread, and the local trade press even talked about the “Hermès the supercomputer”.
However, Breton didn’t last long at the top of Atos. At the end of 2019 he moved to Brussels as EU Internal Market Commissioner. And shortly afterwards things went downhill for the once celebrated IT champion. Improprieties in the accounting became known, but above all it became increasingly clear that Atos had already missed the cloud megatrend under Breton – and the rapidly growing future business with supercomputers, cybersecurity and public data clouds was not enough to cover the losses in the business with fewer and fewer to compensate for in-demand IT services such as classic hosting.
Investors lost confidence and Atos’s market value has evaporated from around 10 billion euros to barely more than 500 million euros since the end of 2020. The CEO has been replaced three times since then. On Monday night, Bertrand Meunier, who took office as Chairman of the Board of Directors after Breton’s departure, also vacated his chair. At the same time, the group announced that it would postpone the implementation of the restructuring plan presented in August until the second quarter of 2024. It envisages splitting the group into two independent companies. The loss-making old business is to be sold completely to investors under the name Tech Foundations and the profitable future business called Eviden is to be sold proportionately to investors.
It is still uncertain what will happen next with Atos. With around 107,000 employees, the company is still an industry heavyweight and is no stranger to Germany since it took over the Siemens IT subsidiary SIS twelve years ago. But it continued to be in the red in the first half of the year and, with its plans to split up, has become the subject of a bidding war in which politics is also heavily involved. The background: Atos is responsible for a number of military-sensitive activities and, among other things, develops applications for processing large amounts of data for the French armed forces. The company is involved in the simulation calculations for the atomic bomb tests, and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is Atos’ largest customer in the supercomputer business.
A recent call from 82 Republican representatives and senators in the newspaper “Le Figaro” shows the results of the political struggle. Atos must “absolutely remain in French hands” because the group is a “key factor” of strategic autonomy through its computer business and, in the future, quantum technology, it said. They criticized the fact that the Elysée Palace and the Atos management were not negotiating a sale to a group of French investors, but rather with a group led by the Czech businessman Daniel Křetínský – a “powerful foreign actor” – according to the break-up plan drawn up by the consulting firm McKinsey. said the Republicans, who had little experience in information and communications technology, unlike areas such as energy, media and retail.
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