The distributor Casino, which passed into the hands of Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky on Wednesday, announced this Thursday, March 28, the “effective completion” of its financial restructuring. A day marked by a collapse of its shares on the Paris Stock Exchange.
The board of directors, chaired by the former Macronist Secretary of State Laurent Pietraszewski and including among its members the general director Philippe Palazzi and Athina Onassis – descendant of the famous Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis -, met on Wednesday at the end of the day . Thursday morning, in a press release, Casino “announces the effective completion of its financial restructuring” and indicates that all of the operations provided for in the safeguard plan approved by the Paris commercial court “were implemented on March 27” . The operation “resulted in a change of control of the Casino group for the benefit of France Retail Holdings S. à rl, an entity ultimately controlled by Daniel Kretinsky”, details the distributor who specifies that its capital is now “composed of 37,304,080,735 shares, representing 37,351,145,246 theoretical voting rights”.
The listing of Casino shares on the Paris Stock Exchange, suspended since Tuesday March 26 at the close of the market, resumed at the opening on Thursday. Shortly after 3:30 p.m. on the Paris Stock Exchange, Casino shares lost 64.45% to 0.04 euros. Since the start of the year, Casino’s stock has lost more than 95% and its market capitalization now stands at around 1.37 billion euros according to real-time data from Bloomberg.
Large format stores sold
The distributor details the composition of its new board of directors, executive committee, strategic committee, audit committee, nominations and remuneration committee, and governance and CSR committee. It will be up to the shareholders to ratify them on June 11 during the general meeting. Furthermore, the group’s new management told AFP on Thursday morning “to renounce the recovery of overpayments” dating back more than 30 years and claimed from nearly 900 employees, according to information published Wednesday by the France Bleu network. According to the media, Casino was demanding advances on salaries dating from the acquisition of several companies in the 1990s, a “regularization” that the distributor justified by the definitive sale of stores as part of its financial restructuring.
The group that Daniel Kretinsky has got his hands on no longer has much to do with the original distributor from Saint-Etienne, the large format stores having almost all been sold. There remain approximately 1,300 integrated stores (338 Monoprix, 170 Naturalia, 323 Franprix and 493 convenience stores under the Spar, Vival, Le Petit Casino brands), for nearly 7,000 franchise-operated stores.
The debt of the group led for two decades by Jean-Charles Naouri, 75, must also be reduced from 7.4 billion euros at the end of 2023 to just over 2.6 billion euros, with repayment deadlines. ranging from January 2027 to the end of March 2028.