Atos, the French IT service provider, posted a net loss of around 3 billion euros last year.

This is the biggest minus in the recent history of the company.

Not only does it deepen the group's crisis, it also puts a serious damper on Europe's hopes of building its own champion in the IT industry.

According to the Management Board, the negative result for 2021 is mainly due to the high depreciation.

From now on it should go uphill again.

The stock market, however, was initially shocked.

Niklas Zaboji

Economic correspondent in Paris

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Ilka Kopplin

Business correspondent in Munich.

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Stephen Finsterbusch

Editor in Business.

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Investors put Atos shares on sell list on Tuesday.

The course lost around 20 percent.

With a market capitalization of only around 3 billion euros, the group could be considered a takeover candidate.

Due to numerous construction sites and the generally gloomy situation on the markets, however, competitors are holding back with potential offers.

With 10 percent of the shares, Siemens is still the largest single shareholder.

The Munich-based company sold its IT subsidiary SIS to Atos in 2011 and in return received 180 million euros in cash and almost half a billion euros in shares and convertible bonds.

Since then, the share price has fallen by 25 percent.

The takeover was initiated by the former Siemens boss Peter Loescher and the then Atos board member and current EU Commissioner Thierry Breton.

In doing so, they wanted to build a European IT champion who would catch up with the American industry giants.

"We need a partnership like the one with Siemens in Europe, we need a company like Atos," Breton told the FAZ at the time.

In 2015, Breton bought the French computer manufacturer Bull, and in 2016 the German telecom service provider Unify, in which Siemens also held shares.

Key market Germany

The German head of Atos, Udo Littke, said in an interview with the FAZ: "Siemens is still the largest customer and partner today." Atos offers maintenance and repair software, for example, which customers of the Munich group use.

The business in Germany, with around 10,000 employees, is very important for the French company, as it accounts for around a fifth of group sales, according to Littke, and Atos wants to boost this as quickly as possible under new management.

For the time being, however, the new CEO Rodolphe Belmer, who took office in January, tried to draw a line under the past year.

For 2021, he had the enterprise value and other long-term assets written off by 1.9 billion euros.

He booked another 500 million euros in impairments, provisions and revaluations for contract assets, bad debts and future losses.

The Atos boss openly admitted on Monday that the company was facing "considerable difficulties" and had missed its financial targets.

A spokesman even spoke of a “disaster year”.

Belmer wants to turn things around.

His target range for sales growth is minus 0.5 to plus 1.5 percent.

He is aiming for a return on sales of 3 to 5 percent, after 3.5 percent most recently.

Analysts consider these goals to be unambitious after sales in 2021 fell by 2.5 percent compared to 2020 to around 10.8 billion euros and the return on sales in the year before last was 9 percent.