by Dominique Vidalon
PARIS (Reuters) – Heavily in debt, the Casino group is heading towards the opening of official negotiations with its creditors in order to resolve its financial difficulties, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, even though the distributor is the subject of several reconciliation projects.
Casino, directed and controlled by businessman Jean-Charles Naouri, has been seeking for several years to reduce its debt, in particular through the sale of assets.
The owner of the Franprix and Monoprix brands “would have requested the opening of a conciliation procedure”, said one of the sources.
Casino’s creditors had until 3:00 p.m. GMT on Tuesday to give the green light to the opening of a conciliation procedure.
The Paris Commercial Court must now decide to formalize the opening of this procedure, establish a timetable for the discussions and mandate conciliators to supervise the process.
Lawyer Marc Sénéchal and court administrator Aurélia Perdereau are the candidates, the sources said.
The procedure aims to reach an agreement on the restructuring of the debt of Casino, whose net consolidated debt reached 6.4 billion euros at the end of December, but also to examine the way in which the two recent rapprochement with Casino may influence the situation.
Last month, Daniel Kretínský offered to take control of Casino via a capital increase of 1.1 billion euros, an offer which came to compete with the proposed merger between the Saint-Etienne distributor and its French counterpart Teract.
The Casino action has been suspended since Monday on the Paris Stock Exchange pending the publication of a press release.
(Report Dominique Vidalon, Blandine Hénault for the French version, edited by Nicolas Delame)
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