Billionaire Kretinsky and OnePoint make redemption offers for Atos

(Bloomberg) — French technology company Atos SE has received offers to help rescue the company that will frame discussions with its stakeholders around its restructuring.

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David Layani’s OnePoint, a group of Atos lenders, private equity firm Bain Capital and billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, along with credit fund Attestor Ltd., submitted bids last week, the company said in a statement Monday. -fair. The company decided not to pursue discussions with Bain Capital because the private equity firm’s offer did not meet Atos’ objectives.

Read more: Kretinsky joins Attestor in bidding for French IT company Atos

Atos aims to reach a restructuring agreement with its creditors on May 31 and a final agreement by July 2024. CEO Paul Saleh is trying to save Atos, once one of the country’s leading technology companies before a series of setbacks leaving it on the brink of insolvency. The company said it needs to raise €1.7 billion of new money to finance the business until 2025 and reduce debt by €3.2 billion.

Atos said negotiations with the French state over the acquisition of the strategic businesses are ongoing. The company has reached a 100 million euro ($108 million) interim financing agreement with bondholders and discussions are progressing with its banks and the French state over the remaining 350 million euros, Atos said.

Details of Kretinsky and Attestor’s combined bid were first reported by Bloomberg. Atos said on Monday that details of the proposals will be published on its investor relations website.

Read more: Atos CEO says debt talks will save fallen French tech star

The original bid submission date was pushed back by a week and debt injection and cutting needs were revised after Atos reported that its debt problems had put customers off, causing them to delay signing new contracts and harming financial results in the first quarter.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said earlier this week that the government had made an offer to take over some parts of the business it considers strategic.

Still, previous plans to offload assets and raise funds failed. Separate negotiations with Airbus SE and Kretinsky collapsed earlier this year, and the French government was forced to step in with interim financing. A court-appointed mediator is now handling the conciliation process with your creditors.

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Atos provides information technology services, including to key government departments as well as the nuclear industry, and has a deal to provide cyber security for the Paris Olympics this summer. The company grew rapidly over the previous decade through acquisitions, adding supercomputing and cybersecurity services to its IT products. But investors began balking at the spending, and in 2021, auditors found accounting errors at two of the company’s U.S. entities.

Read more: Why France’s former $15 billion tech champion needs state aid

Meanwhile, analysts argue that Atos missed the industry-wide shift to cloud-based services, alienating some customers. Shares have plummeted – falling about 97% since the start of 2021 – and efforts to restructure the business have failed, leading to a revolving door of CEOs.

Saleh, Atos’ fifth chief executive in less than three years, has put a confident spin on the talks so far and said in an interview last month that he believes the company can be saved, characterizing the dialogue with creditors as “very, very positive.”

–With assistance from Wout Vergauwen and Valentine Baldassari.

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