by Mathieu Rosemain
PARIS (Reuters) – Casino’s creditors were received on Thursday morning at the Ministry of Finance for a meeting, the first of its kind, devoted to the financial situation of the distribution group, which has started negotiations on the restructuring of its debt to the end of last month, we learned from two sources.
The management of Casino was also represented at this meeting headed by the Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring (CIRI), a public body responsible for helping companies in difficulty.
Casino’s consolidated net debt reached 6.4 billion euros at the end of December. Casino must repay 3 billion euros in debt over the next two years and the holding company through which Jean-Charles Naouri controls the group is also heavily indebted.
BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Natixis are involved in the restructuring talks, which involve a total of 21 creditors as well as funds, one of the sources said. They are split between secured debt holders and unsecured debt holders, with each group holding about half of the debt.
An audit by Accuracy was presented to creditors, added the same source, in order to provide them with an exact statement of the distribution group’s finances.
The deadline for the conciliation procedure has been set by the courts at October 25.
An agreement could however be concluded before this date, while two competing offers, both proposing to inject 1.1 billion euros into Casino, have emerged in recent weeks with on one side the trio of businessmen formed by Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari, and on the other the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.
“The vision of new money providers is to say that at least the debt must be halved. So we must crush 3 billion in debt one way or another,” the source told Reuters. .
Neither Casino nor Bercy wished to comment.
(French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Tangi Salaün)
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