French distribution group Casino issued a bid led by Czech tycoon Daniel Kretinsky, for which he is expected to take control of the heavily indebted company. Kretinsky submitted his offer with the support of French investor Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and the British fund Attestor.
Following the green light received on Monday night, The consortium has yet to convince Casino’s creditors, including large European and French banks, of its offer. as well as investment funds and institutional actors.
(Also read: Brazilian GPA rejects Gilinski’s offer for Éxito, considering it too low)
Casino is the owner in Latin America of the Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição (GPA), which is, in turn, the owner of the Éxito supermarket chain present in Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
Casino, with some 200,000 employees worldwide, andIt is pending to renegotiate its high debt, which reached 6,400 million euros (6,975 million dollars) at the end of 2022, and find fresh money to guarantee its viability.
(You may also be interested: Dollar is already trading at less than 4,000 pesos and maintains its downward behavior)
for now, at the end of June it announced its desire to divest its subsidiaries in Brazil (Grupo Pao de Açucar) and Colombia (Éxito), after selling its 11.7 percent stake in the Brazilian group Assai. The offer led by Kretinsky, the only one after the withdrawal of the one made by the businessmen Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari, plans to reduce the debt to 2,500 million euros in fines per year, and to 1,200 million at the end of 2024.
Carulla and Éxito are part of the Éxito group, managed by Casino.
Who is Kretinsky?
The offer also provides for a capital increase of 925 million euros reserved for the proposing consortium, after which it will have a 53 percent stake.
On the other hand, the consortium assures that it does not plan to eliminate jobs and that, on the contrary, it intends to “create work in stores and logistics centers.”
Daniel Kretinsky, 47, is already a Casino shareholder, with a stake of more than 10 percent. She built her fortune, estimated by Forbes at 8.5 billion euros, thanks to fossil fuels, and is known in France for her investments in the newspaper Le Monde and on television.
Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky, who wants to stay with Casino.
The Czech businessman has great ambitions in the distribution sector. He is currently the “reference shareholder” in the German Metro group, with 45 percent of the capital.
It is also the second shareholder, only behind Qatar, the number two in the British market, Sainsbury’s, with 10 percent of the capital.
The Casino group has already warned that its start to the year 2023 would be very bad, with significant setbacks in sales in supermarkets.
Many point out that in France customers consider the products in their supermarkets (Monoprix, Franprix, Casino…) too expensive, despite some price drops in recent months.
Kretinsky is ready to take control of Casino Guichard Perrachon, into which he would inject 1.2 billion euros (1.4 billion dollars).
The French do not like the idea of a foreigner taking control of the casino. According to information from agencies, the country has opposed such deals before, as it did when Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. tried to buy Casino’s rival Carrefour SA more than two years ago.
Casino’s convenience stores in central Paris and the Côte d’Azur are seen as valuable assets despite the company’s broader woes, which have been caused in part by the underperformance of lighting hypermarkets outside the city. Overall, the grocery store’s domestic market share has fallen to around 6 percent from more than 8 percent in 2018, according to research firm Kantar.
