On the forecourt of Saint-Etienne-Châteaucreux station, the eye is immediately caught by the huge building located opposite, on the left, a few dozen meters away. Almost impossible to miss. In its futuristic aspect, this building has housed Casino’s head office since 2007. A 36,000 square meter glass and metal monster, where 2,000 employees come to work every week. The brand celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. Placarded on the facade, the motto “Casino Forever #Forts & Verts” displays the historical color of the company.
Signals of hope, as the last jewel of the Saint-Etienne basin is going through the most difficult period in its history. Cornered by an abysmal debt of 6.5 billion euros, the CEO, Jean-Charles Naouri, is preparing to lose control of the group, which has more than 200,000 employees worldwide, including 50,000 in France. . A serious threat to the French economy, but also to the local ecosystem which depends heavily on the good results of the brand renowned for its local shops. Aware of the social issue, Bruno Le Maire affirmed, on July 11, at the National Assembly, that the State would be “vigilant on employment” and on maintaining the headquarters in the city. His first speech since the beginning of the adventures.
Concern rises among employees
In the corridors of the company, the concern is palpable. Information on the negotiations in progress arrives in dribs and drabs and often through the press. From a distance, the employees watch the match between the duo made up of the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky and the 20th French fortune, Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, with the trio bringing together Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari (3F Holding). On the union side, the determination remains intact. “We want to keep the group alive. It’s 125 years old. In 1997, we were the ones who saved the company against Promodès’ takeover bid. We’re ready to negotiate with the buyers, to see how they work, we expect a roadmap from them”, explains Nathalie Devienne, general secretary of SNTA FO, the first Casino union.
During the last group committee in Paris, on July 7, Jean-Charles Naouri, who had himself imposed the date after a first postponement, skipped the session. At the announcement of this absence, the unions immediately slammed the door of the meeting. “We still have no answers to our questions,” sighs the central CGT union representative, Ali Eloued. An emotion that tries by all means to calm Magali Daubinet-Salen. Arrived in the house in 2007, the one who had been Deputy General Manager of Distribution Casino France (DCF) since 2020, in charge of administrative and financial management, took the reins of the Casino Brands – Hyper Frais stores, Casino supermarkets and boutiques. downtown – last April.
“The current situation naturally raises questions among our employees. But I am committed to being very close to them, while insisting on a message: the problem of debt is managed by general management. At the end of the day, this does not impact them directly. Our concern remains the commercial revival”, assures this native of Forez, aged 46. “In Saint-Etienne, football is never very far away. The shareholders wanted to favor promising young people coming out of the training center rather than looking for pseudo-stars”, sums up Daniel Villareale, the president of the CPME Loire, in reference to the history that links Casino to ASSE and whose 90-year-old partnership was recently renewed.
The head office is in the process of being retained
Today, the potential buyers are both presenting an offer on which it is written in black and white that the Saint-Etienne headquarters will be maintained as it is. For Magali Daubinet-Salen, this decision makes sense: “When Jean-Charles Naouri took control of the group in 1992, the question had already arisen. And when he saw the quality of the local teams, very committed, with seniority and know-how, he quickly concluded that rebuilding everything else would have led to a very strong loss”. The mayor of the city, Gaël Perdriau, agrees: “Keeping the seat in Saint-Etienne is non-negotiable, it’s more than symbolic. If Naouri had wanted to move, he could have done it years ago. He had necessarily good reasons to stay and these are always valid for the buyers. What’s more, Naouri is renowned for not making feelings in business”. Especially since the place of this establishment was not chosen at random. “They settled in this new district under renovation to benefit from high visibility and build something spectacular”, recalls Brigitte Carrier-Reynaud, lecturer at Jean-Monnet University, located south of the old mining town.
In Saint-Etienne, the inhabitants have long lived to the rhythm of Casino. Everyone repeats it: in every family, there is at least one person who has worked – or who knows someone who has worked – in the offices or in a branch of the brand. “It’s obviously a company that has very strong roots. Beyond this aspect, there is a real attachment to Casino through the transmission of work over the generations”, specifies Brigitte Carrier-Reynaud. In 2016, the company signed an agreement with Saint-Etienne to deposit its archives. “This confidence is quite revealing of the link which unites it to the city. They could have entrusted the memory of the group to another organization, but they preferred to mark the territorial affiliation of the group”, analyzes Pierre-Régis Dupuy, the director municipal archives.
Ties to the city are eroding over time
However, if the company remains engraved in the hearts of the older generations, the links with the city have crumbled over time. “Casino has been deterritorialized for a long time with the arrival of Naouri. The fact that there are no longer family leaders at the head of the company has undoubtedly contributed to moving it away from the territory”, underlines Brigitte Carrier-Reynaud. More prosaically, the pricing policy has not helped: the sixty or so convenience stores spread over the metropolis of Saint-Etienne are attracting fewer and fewer shoppers. “Casino has become too expensive. Take this bag of three peppers: at Carrefour, it is much cheaper,” confesses the manager of a Vival store, one of the brands belonging to Casino. An observation shared by Magali Daubinet-Salen: “Inflation really complicated our activity at the end of last year. We passed on the prices that suppliers imposed on us in our purchases, while our competitors, for some , had stopped doing it. Result: we created a significant delta between our prices and those of our rivals. This path was not the right one.”
In an attempt to reverse the trend, the new leader began to readjust the labels. But if customers return, will the troops be able to keep up? “Stores today are not working well. Employees are not replaced when they fall ill or retire. Casino is content to reduce the payroll,” says Nathalie Devienne, of SNTA FO. Two kilometers from the head office, the city’s hypermarket, with its 8,700 square meters of surface area, serves as a laboratory for the brand’s future innovations. Its director, Cyril Murzereau, acknowledges that inflation has hit attendance hard. But he keeps a cool head in the face of the internal turmoil: “We are not fixing it. We have to stay focused on our business and our performance, without giving in to gloom.” The eyes of the Stéphanois are now turned towards Paris. The two takeover offers must be studied on July 27 by the commercial court of the capital. And it’s a whole city and a department, where Casino generates nearly 4,000 indirect jobs, which hold their breath.