Thales and its adviser Centerview Partners have approached several private equity firms, including Bain Capital, to consider a potential joint bid for Atos in a deal that could bust it, the sources said.
French defense group Thales would buy the big data and cybersecurity business, known as BDS, they told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Shares of Atos fell to their lowest level since mid-2012 after issuing two profit warnings in seven months, becoming an attractive target for capital investors.
Yet any sale would face headwinds in France where Emmanuel Macron’s government is wary of seeing sensitive “national champions” like Atos being sold off from foreign investors ahead of the presidential elections in April.
“The French government will strongly oppose any dismantling of Atos from now on,” one of the sources said.
Thales advisers have also entered into talks with CVC Capital Partners and PAI Partners about a possible joint bid for Atos, but the timing of such a deal remains uncertain, another source added.
Thales, Atos, Centerview, Bain and PAI declined to comment, while CVC was not immediately available.
The French finance minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Atos, whose market value is 3.5 billion euros ($3.95 billion), gave former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe a seat on its board of directors in 2020 and had European Commissioner Thierry Breton as CEO for more than a decade, making him a politically sensitive target, the sources said.
Atos, advised by Rothschild, has rebuffed previous bids from Thales for BDS and would consider any initiative by private equity funds to launch a public offering and delist Atos from the Paris Stock Exchange to be hostile and undesirable, one of the sources said. .
BDS is valued between 2 and 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) and accounts for around half of Atos’ overall revenue, the source added.
Thales and Atos recently partnered in a joint venture called Athea to develop a sovereign big data and artificial intelligence platform for the public and private sectors, with a focus on defence, intelligence and homeland security.
For Thales, bolstering cybersecurity operations has been on the agenda since it bought Dutch data protection firm Gemalto for 4.8 billion euros in 2019, pledging to create a global powerhouse in cybersecurity. digital security.
Bain, which bought French IT services firm Inetum in January in a deal worth around $2.27 billion, would use any joint Atos buyout to expand its portfolio of tech assets. in Europe, where it also controls the Italian computer company Engineering Group.
($1 = 0.8835 euros)