"The final decision to request the opening of a conciliation procedure remains subject to the approval of the board of directors of Casino," says the group, indebted to the tune of 6.4 billion euros at the end of 2022, to which are added more than three billion in debt for the parent company of the group, Rallye.
This announcement comes as Thierry Blandinières, CEO of the InVivo group which is the main shareholder of Teract, on the ranks to take over the French activity of Casino, said Tuesday that "a conciliator" would "be appointed on May 22" at the bedside of the group of Saint-Etienne origin.
"We are entering the phase of studying the debt" and "a conciliator will be appointed on May 22," explained Mr. Blandinières on Radio Classique, adding that "from there, we will surely have a better visibility of the extent of the debt of Casino".
The conciliation procedure is an amicable procedure that should allow the company in difficulty to reach an amicable agreement with its main creditors.
The distributor, 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.
Casino has been officially discussing since February a possible merger with Teract, whose majority shareholder is the agri-food giant InVivo and which has around the table of its board of directors the founder of Free Xavier Niel and the investment banker Matthieu Pigasse. At the end of April, the third largest supermarket chain in France, Intermarché, joined these discussions.
Daniel Kretinsky, already a 10% shareholder in Casino, also proposed on April 24 to inject 750 million euros into the group via a reserved capital increase of more than one billion euros in total.
Teract CEO Moez-Alexandre Zouari recently called on the Czech billionaire to work together.
© 2023 AFP