PARIS (Reuters) – The Orpea group announced in a statement on Wednesday the opening the day before of an amicable conciliation procedure before the Commercial Court of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) in order to renegotiate its debt with its creditors.
The group, in turmoil since the end of January amid accusations of failings in the care of residents of its retirement homes followed by the discovery of financial embezzlement, also makes it known that a transformation plan will be presented on November 15 next.
“In order to guarantee the implementation of the transformation plan that I will present on November 15, in a degraded macroeconomic context which has impacted operational performance as well as the asset disposal program, and in view of the risk of impairments on certain assets, I asked for the opening of an amicable conciliation procedure concerning Orpea”, explains Laurent Guillot, general manager of the group, quoted in the press release.
Orpea had already used a conciliation procedure last spring to renegotiate its debt, but the agreement reached in mid-June is now compromised by “the highly inflationary economic environment and the consequences of the strategic and financial review currently being finalized “.
At this stage, in view of the ongoing strategic review, the group anticipates asset impairments as of December 31, 2022 for an amount estimated between 2.1 and 2.5 billion euros before tax, without excluding the possibility of record additional impairments in the future to those mentioned above.
The conciliation procedure, which only concerns financial debt and does not involve “operational” creditors (such as suppliers for example), “will have no impact on operations, employees, patients, residents and their families. “, it is specified in the press release.
The quotation of all the group’s financial instruments, suspended Monday by the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), resumed this Wednesday at the opening of the markets.
The action of the private Ehpad group (accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people) fell by 45.5% in the first exchanges on the Paris Stock Exchange, in its wake, its competitor Korian yielded around 6%.
(Written by Myriam Rivet, edited by Nicolas Delame)