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Atos crisis deepens as largest shareholder abandons rescue plan
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A rescue bid for French IT services group Atos, led by its largest shareholder, has failed, putting the troubled group’s future in doubt once again.
Acts said on Wednesday that the consortium led by Onepoint, an IT consultancy founded by David Layani, withdrew a proposal that would have converted €2.9 billion of Atos debt into equity and injected €250 million of new funds into the company in difficulty.
“The conditions have not been met to conclude an agreement that paves the way for a lasting solution to financial restructuring,” Onepoint said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Onepoint’s decision comes less than a month after Atos chose its restructuring proposal over a competing plan from Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínsky. Atos said on Wednesday that Křetínsky had already indicated he wanted to restart negotiations.
Once a star of the French tech scene, Atos is racing to close a restructuring deal by next month as it battles its €4.8 billion debt. It has gone through several chief executives over the past three years and its shares have plummeted. They fell 12 percent in early trading Wednesday.
Atos also said it had received a revised restructuring proposal from a group of its bondholders.
“Discussions are continuing with the representative committee of creditors and some banks based on this proposal with a view to reaching an agreement as quickly as possible,” the company stated.
Jean-Pierre Mustier, former chief executive of Italian lender UniCredit, was sworn in as president in October 2023 and given the task of putting Atos on a stable footing for the future. Since his appointment, several efforts to stabilize Atos through asset sales have failed.
If talks with Křetínsky are restarted, it would mark the Czech businessman’s third attempt to strike a deal with Atos, after an earlier plan to buy his loss-making legacy business was scrapped.
One of the people close to the negotiations said creditors had not necessarily become more receptive to Kretinsky’s plan as he cut a larger chunk of the group’s debt.
The crisis at Atos led the French government to intervene. It currently intends to acquire three parts of Atos that are considered important for national security for up to one billion euros.
Atos said on Wednesday it had concluded a deal with the French state that would give it so-called “golden shares” in a key Atos subsidiary, Bull SA. The agreement also gives the government the right to acquire “sensitive sovereign activities” in the event a third party acquires 10 percent of the shares – or a multiple thereof – in Atos or Bull.