2023-05-22 19:36:39
The Paris Commercial Court opened a conciliation procedure on Monday to allow the parent company of Casino to negotiate with its creditors the abandonment of part of its debt.
It was a prerequisite for the entry of new investors. In a press release from the various holding companies that control the distribution group, the Rallye group confirms that the Paris Commercial Court has opened a conciliation procedure with the company’s creditors at its request.
The amicable discussions announced on April 25 having been unsuccessful, Rallye “decided to request the opening of a conciliation procedure in order to benefit from a more protective legal framework to continue discussions” with the creditors, which the commercial court accepted, according to a press release from the group.
“The President of the Paris Commercial Court today opened conciliation proceedings with regard to Rallye, Foncière Euris, Finatis and Euris, for an initial period of four months, extendable if necessary by an additional month”, and appointed two conciliators, continues the text.
This announcement does not directly concern the Casino distribution group, in financial difficulties, which has given itself until May 23, 5:00 p.m., before deciding on the advisability of a conciliation procedure with its creditors.
Casino is indebted to the tune of 6.4 billion euros at the end of 2022 (including 4.5 billion on its French activity), to which must be added more than three billion in debt for the group’s parent company, Rallye
This procedure is planned “for an initial period of four months, extendable if necessary by an additional month”, specifies the press release.
Rallye, as well as the cascade of holding companies through which Jean-Charles Naouri holds control of the distributor, had benefited in May 2019 from a placement in safeguard procedure.
Casino, which employs more than 50,000 people in France and 200,000 worldwide under many brands, including Monoprix or Franprix, has been struggling for years to get out of debt, so far without success.
He has been officially discussing since February a possible merger with the Teract group, which mainly includes garden center brands (Jardiland, Gamm Vert), and whose majority shareholder is the agrifood giant InVivo, a union of 188 agricultural cooperatives.
Teract et Kretinsky
Teract, whose general manager is Moez-Alexandre Zouari, a major franchisee of the Casino group in Ile-de-France and shareholder of the frozen food brand Picard, has around the table of its board of directors the founder of Free Xavier Niel and investment banker Matthieu Pigasse.
At the end of April, the third supermarket chain in France, Intermarché, joined these discussions. But another offer emerged, carried by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, already a 10% shareholder in Casino, and who proposed on April 24 to inject 750 million euros into the group via a reserved capital increase of more than one billion euros.
He is allied for the occasion with an old friend of the CEO of Casino Jean-Charles Naouri, the French billionaire Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, owner of Fimalac – already third shareholder of Casino – and assured that in his eyes “the financial situation ” de Casino was “no longer tenable without rapid intervention”.
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