The French IT giant still in turmoil. Onepoint, the main shareholder of Atos, wants to withdraw from the group’s capital, after having given up on taking it back even though its offer had been chosen, Atos announced in a press release on Friday June 28.
Onepoint’s representatives, its chairman David Layani and Helen Lee Bouygues, are resigning “with immediate effect from the board of directors” of Atos, the group added in this brief press release. Both had joined the board of directors of Atos at the end of February, of which Onepoint is the largest shareholder with more than 11% of the capital.
Spectacular turn of events
These announcements come two days after yet another twist in the Atos case, once the flagship of French IT, but which is today fighting for its survival in a long descent into hell.
Chosen on June 11 to take over Atos and try to save it, the consortium led by Onepoint threw in the towel on Wednesday, to everyone’s surprise. This leaves the way open for Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky to resume discussions, while he had initially been rejected.
Mired in a financial crisis for nearly three years, Atos, which is now worth just over one euro on the stock market, had initiated a restructuring procedure in February. It had announced that it needed 1.1 billion euros of liquidity for its activity in 2024-2025 and wanted to massively reduce its gross debt, by 4.8 billion euros, to safeguard its activity.
Atos will be a technological pillar of the Paris Olympics this summer, and its future also has a strong political dimension linked to its strategic activities in the field of defense (army equipment or supercomputers used for the French nuclear deterrent).