The Casino group announced, this Wednesday evening, October 25, that it had been placed by the Paris Commercial Court in accelerated safeguard procedure for at least two months, in order to “implement” the restructuring of its debt in the continuity of the agreement reached at the end of July.
Casino – 200,000 employees worldwide, including 50,000 in France under well-known brands like Monoprix, Franprix or Grupo de Acucar – was strangled by a debt of 6.4 billion euros at the end of 2022, but its restructuring is made possible by a takeover offer from Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, Frenchman Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and the British fund Attestor.
Placement in accelerated safeguard is a process at the end of which recalcitrant creditors will be brought on board “in a forced manner if necessary” since the law provides for it, noted several sources at the end of July when the agreement in principle was signed.
Casino also received significant cash at the end of September as part of the sale of a significant number of stores to its competitor Intermarché.