The Casino and Mousquetaires-Intermarché distribution groups “completed the sale” of 61 stores at the end of September, as planned in the agreement concluded in May, which allows the former to reduce its debt and the latter to increase its shares of walk. The two groups formalized the operation on Monday October 2, citing a “company value of 209 million euros including service stations”.
The two food distribution specialists, respectively the seventh and third players in the sector, agreed in May on a two-stage sale of 119 stores involving 4,000 employees, with an optional third of around sixty stores.
The operations “were carried out on September 30” and Casino “received the transfer price”, while Les Mousquetaires have “already taken possession of 58 of the 61 sold points of sale”, specify the two groups.
With regard to the stores in the second wave of transfers, which must take place “within a maximum period of three years”, “the Les Mousquetaires group acquired a non-controlling stake of 49% in these points of sale and paid to Casino, on September 30, 2023, a first lump sum payment of 140 million euros,” the companies specify. This sum will be deducted “from the final price calculated on the basis of the market value of the assets”.
Restructuring your debt
This agreement also provides for an extension of their purchasing partnerships, in particular through a supply agreement “with the seafood and butchery sectors” of the Mousquetaires, who have the particularity of having a large agri-food production network. .
The transaction takes place in a troubled context for Casino, which is plagued by an unsustainable debt that it must restructure as part of a conciliation period with its creditors, recently extended until October 25 by the Paris commercial court .
At the end of July, the group’s key creditors undertook “to support and carry out any steps or actions reasonably necessary” for Casino to be able to restructure its debt, and thus to accept the takeover offer from Czech Daniel Kretinsky and of his allies, the billionaire Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and the British fund Attestor.
This offer provides for the contribution of 1.2 billion euros in new money and the reduction of nearly 5 billion euros in the group’s debt, as well as the sale of the Casino activities in Latin America, for which the three quarters of the group’s 200,000 employees.
Ten hypermarkets concerned
In the immediate future, the transition to the “Intermarché or Netto” brand of the first 61 stores is planned “during October”, the time necessary for the brand change work. It is specified that a store in Confrançon, in Ain, “will be subject to a subsequent transfer”.
Ten hypermarkets are affected: three in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (Albertville, Chasse-sur-Rhône, Vals-près-le-Puy), four in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (Besançon, Chalon-sur-Saône, Fontaine-lès- Dijon, Lons-le-Saunier), one in Centre-Val de Loire (Tours-La Riche), one in Hauts-de-France (Amiens) and one in Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Poitiers).
The sold stores are distributed throughout the territory, with a larger number in the south-west and east of France, on an axis going from Charleville-Mézières, in the Ardennes, to Bernis, in the Gard , passing through Firminy, in the Loire, not far from the historic headquarters of the brand founded one hundred and twenty-five years ago by Geoffroy Guichard in Saint-Etienne.
The operation is a cause for concern for the employees concerned. They fear experiencing poorer working conditions at Intermarché, after fifteen months of transition where they will retain their social benefits. Within the group of independents, social policy depends, in fact, on each store owner.
In recent weeks, certain trade union organizations had also complained to Agence France-Presse that most of the employees affected by the transfer did not yet know, three weeks before the change of brand, their future working hours.