Atos director opposes sale of IT services to Daniel Kretinsky

Administrator René Proglio expressed his disagreement regarding the sale of the IT services division. But he did not vote against it at the board meeting reportedly held while he was on a plane to China.

This is a new crisis within Atos management. According to several sources close to the group, a senior executive of the IT services group was against the sale of its historic IT fleet management activities to Daniel Kretinsky. This is René Proglio, director for a little over a year and above all, chairman of the Atos accounts committee. According to our information, he expressed his opposition to the operation when it was finalized at the end of July. A few days later, he did not participate in the vote at the July 31 board meeting. “He said he was on a plane to China,” several corroborating sources explain to us.

The decisive board meeting of July 31 was convened that same morning, for the end of the afternoon. “The chairman of the board, Bertrand Meunier, brought it together knowing that René Proglio could not be there,” assures a source close to Atos. “He had even communicated his flight times so that the council could organize itself and be able to attend,” adds another source. Contacted, René Proglio did not respond to us.

According to one of his relatives, he was furious at having been dismissed from the board of directors and made it known afterwards. He even reportedly received pressure to resign from his position as director because he criticized the sale of part of Atos to Daniel Kretinsky. Today, he still sits there. This situation creates disorder because he is chairman of the Atos accounts committee. His endorsement is all the stronger as he headed the French subsidiary of the audit firm Arthur Andersen for twenty years.

Standoff between Meunier and Proglio

The entourage of the president of Atos does not have the same version of the facts. “Being on a plane is a far-fetched pretext, annoys someone close to Bertrand Meunier. René Proglio did not even give a voting delegation.” Who fooled the other? For several months, a standoff has been going on between the two men. The president of Atos suspects René Proglio of aiming for his place. The latter complains privately of having been isolated in the council by Bertrand Meunier who brought in the former banker Jean-Pierre Mustier to thwart him.

Officially, the board of directors therefore voted in favor of the sale of IT services “unanimously by the members present”, according to Atos. According to several sources, another board member, Caroline Ruellan, was also not comfortable with this operation. Contacted, she did not respond.

Among senior executives, the departure of financial director Nathalie Sénéchault is also causing chatter internally. Some consider her responsible for Atos’ poor financial communication around its results this summer. Others believe, on the contrary, that she left her position because she did not want to assume the financial conditions of the sale of IT services to Daniel Kretinsky.

General meeting postponed

This is precisely what the activist fund CIAM, shareholder of Atos, openly criticized at the beginning of September. He considers this operation as a “gift” given to the Czech businessman who recovers a billion euros of cash in the outsourcing activities “to finance their restructuring”, estimates the fund in a letter to the directors of the group. He plans to vote against this sale at the general meeting of shareholders which Atos plans to delay. Originally planned for this fall, it should be postponed, according to our information, to early 2024.

The pressure has increased a notch since another shareholder of Atos, the Alix AM fund, filed a complaint for “active and passive corruption”. He denounces in particular the remuneration that the Czech businessman promised to the general director Nourdine Bihmane and to the deputy general director Diane Galbe. The figures of 25 million euros and 15 million euros, mentioned by Mediapart, are circulating. “These are target objectives which could be doubled if the results of the division bought by Daniel Kretinsky were better than expected,” explains a good expert on the matter. In the event of recovery of these activities, Atos will also receive part of the profits earned by the buyer.