This is the epilogue of a long saga. After having given up on taking over Atos – and this, while its offer had been chosen – Onepoint, the main shareholder of Atos, now wants to withdraw from the capital of the IT giant in great difficulty. An announcement made, this Friday, by Atos in a press release.
Onepoint representatives, its president David Layani and Helen Lee Bouygues, resign ” with immediate effect of the board of directors » from Atos, added the group in this brief press release.
Both had joined the board of directors of Atos at the end of February, of which Onepoint is the largest shareholder with more than 11% of the capital. These announcements come two days after yet another dramatic turn of events in the Atos affair, once the flagship of French IT, but which is now fighting for its survival in a long descent into hell.
Atos: twist, the Onepoint consortium suddenly withdraws its takeover offer
Surprise withdrawal
Chosen on June 11 to take over Atos and try to save it, the consortium led by Onepoint threw in the towel on Wednesday, to everyone’s surprise. This leaves the way open for Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky to resume discussions, although he had initially been rejected.
Mired in a financial crisis for nearly three years, Atos, which is now worth just over one euro on the stock market, had initiated a restructuring procedure in February. It had announced that it needed 1.1 billion euros of liquidity for its activity in 2024-2025 and wanted to massively reduce its gross debt, by 4.8 billion euros, to safeguard its activity.
Atos will be a technological pillar of the Paris Olympics this summer, and its future also has a strong political dimension linked to its strategic activities in the field of defense (army equipment or supercomputers used for the French nuclear deterrent).
The State wants to take over the strategic activities of Atos
Another hot issue on the table for Atos: the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, announced at the end of May his intention to place Worldgrid, the strategic subsidiary of Atos dedicated to “Remote control ” French nuclear power plants, under state control. An announcement that is part of the state’s desire to acquire Atos’ activities deemed ” strategic “, so that they do not fall into the hands of foreign actors.
On June 14, a press release from the company revealed that the State had made an offer of 700 million euros to buy the group’s activities deemed strategic and sensitive, including supercomputers used for nuclear deterrence. The State’s proposal, formulated in a ” non-binding confirmatory offer letter “, concerned ” the potential acquisition of 100% of the Advanced Computing, Mission-Critical Systems and Cybersecurity Products activities of the BDS (Big Data & Cybersecurity) division ” from Atos, the latter specified.
(With AFP)
