In a press release issued at the end of the day, Sunday July 15, the trio of businessmen made up of Xavier Niel (also an individual shareholder of the Le Monde group), Moez-Alexandre Zouari and Matthieu Pigasse announced that their alliance, called 3F, “has decided not to submit an offer for the takeover of Groupe Casino”.
Two takeover offers had so far been made for the distributor, which is struggling with its debt and entered into a conciliation at the end of May to try to renegotiate it: one by 3F, therefore, the other by the duo of billionaires Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière.
The former, on Sunday, consider that “following a worse than expected financial situation, 3F had made specific requests” on several points, including a projection of liquidity and results needs in 2023, they did not “not received the requested information”.
In addition, the trio deplores that one of Casino’s creditors, Attestor, participated, according to them, “in a competing offer before the submission of offers”, a corrected version of which was to be finalized before Friday, July 13 before 9 p.m. a review, Monday, July 17, by the group’s management and creditors.
This action, criticize MM. Niel, Zouari and Pigasse, was conducted “without ever informing 3F, even after the submission of this competing offer”, “while it was engaged with 3F in a still valid offer, the validity of which had been extended in agreement with him (…) and while continuing to participate in 3F meetings. »
“In responsibility”, continue the investors, 3F “refuses to participate in a biased process – the company having obviously already chosen its buyer -, a process which does not give an equal chance to all candidates and the best possible chance to the Casino Group and to its employees”. “3F remains open and available for Casino to be saved and once again become the champion it was,” the three men wrote at the end of the press release.
A few minutes after the 3F press release was sent, Daniel Kretinsky, author of the competing offer with Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, spoke in an interview with the business daily Les Echos. “Our interest in Casino has a rational dimension: we act as a shareholder driven by an industrial project, he explains in particular, on the eve of the examination of their offer by the group and its creditors. But there is also an emotional dimension: I am a Francophile; I note that my group is now more present in Germany and the United Kingdom than in France. Becoming, together with my friend Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, the controlling shareholder of Casino, which is a major player, would contribute to a rebalancing. »
The Czech businessman confirms, in the same interview, having submitted a corrected offer to the group during the weekend. “Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and I still plan to bring in €900m of new money and creditors will have the opportunity to subscribe for new shares – on the same terms as us – up to almost €300m. euros,” he says. The injection of 1.35 billion euros of equity, of which more than 900 million euros from themselves is planned, at the rate of 750 million for the Czech billionaire and 150 for the Frenchman.
The Casino group, which employs 200,000 people worldwide, including a quarter in France, had announced that an “agreement in principle with the main creditors on the restructuring of the financial debt” must be concluded no later than July 27, 2023.
Casino must not only renegotiate its crushing debt, announced at 6.4 billion euros at the end of 2022. It must also raise at least 900 million euros in equity. The Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire spoke for the first time on Tuesday, July 11, during questions to the government in the National Assembly, and indicated that the State would ensure “the solidity of the industrial project” and to the future of the group’s 50,000 employees in France.