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The Czech billionaire vying to buy Royal Mail has launched a takeover bid for a French national champion that holds crucial contracts for the upcoming Paris Olympics.
Daniel Kretinsky, the Royal Mail bidder known as the “Czech Sphinx”, is among the financiers vying to bail out troubled tech company Atos.
France’s Atos has various strategically significant deals with the state, including running supercomputers for France’s nuclear deterrent and contracts with the French army. It is the official IT partner for the upcoming summer Olympics.
The company is struggling under the weight of almost €5bn of debt and said last week it needs €1.1bn to stay afloat until 2025.
Mr Kretinsky has tabled a restructuring bid through his investment vehicle EP Group, alongside hedge fund Attestor.
In a letter to the board, Mr Kretinsky said his bid “offers stability quickly by injecting capital and providing stewardship” with the “overarching goal of turning around and relaunching Atos on a solid strategic path”.
Mr Kretinsky is offering to invest €600m of equity in Atos and provide €1.3bn of debt financing, in return for 99pc of the business.
He described Atos as “a company in great distress, disoriented by a strategic deadlock and suffocated by an accumulation of accounting and financial problems”.
The language mirrors his approach to Royal Mail’s parent company International Distributions Services (IDS). Last month Mr Kretinsky tabled a surprise bid for the company, saying “weak financial performance, poor service delivery and a slow transformation” had left it in need of private financing.
Mr Kretinsky’s Royal Mail bid was rejected but he is expected to return with an improved offer.
His involvement in Atos is understood to be entirely separate from his interest in Royal Mail.
However, both approaches are sure to draw intense government scrutiny. The French state has pledged to contribute €50m towards an “interim financing” deal for Atos, signifying the company’s strategic importance in the country.
Overseas bids often receive hostile receptions from the Elysee. Famously the French government made clear it opposed foreign ownership of yoghurt-maker Danone in 2005, on strategic economic grounds.
Atos said on Monday it had received four restructuring bids, including from the business’s existing bondholders and banks, US private equity group Bain Capital and Onpoint, which is already a major shareholder.
Atos said it expects to select a restructuring offer by the end of this month, anticipating “radical changes in the capital structure of the company and significant new equity issuance that will result in a massive dilution of the existing shareholders”.
So far, the board has decided “not to pursue discussions with Bain Capital, as the submitted offer does not meet the stated objectives of the company to consider its full perimeter.”
Paul Saleh, Atos’s chief executive officer, said: “I am confident that a final agreement can be reached by the July target that would assure the continuity of operations to our clients and be in the best interest of Atos’ employees, clients, suppliers, creditors, shareholders and other stakeholders.”
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