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Former UniCredit chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier has been appointed chair of indebted French IT services group Atos following the departure of Bertrand Meunier.
The move is casting doubt over the restructuring and asset sale plan Meunier, a former private equity executive, championed at the group, whose assets include computing technology deemed strategic by the French state.
Atos, which sells software, cyber security and analytics to businesses, also said it had pushed back into next year a shareholder meeting meant to approve the sale of its legacy IT business to Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský. The deal was expected to close by the end of this year.
Shares rose more than 15 per cent following the announcement on Monday, before settling down 3.4 per cent to €4.7, giving the company a market valuation of €526mn.
Atos, which owns quantum computing technology used to carry out work for the French nuclear weapons programme, has been struggling to turn around its business under Meunier, whose plan to split the group has been fraught with delays. This month it appointed a new chief executive — its third in two years. Atos shares have fallen more than 90 per cent in the past five years.
The French government has been closely following the situation, according to people with knowledge of the matter. On Monday former defence procurement head Laurent Collet-Billon was appointed vice-chair of the board. Like Mustier, he joined the board in May.
“[Meunier] lost everyone’s trust. Shareholders, employees, stakeholders . . . The Ministry of the Armed Forces is very worried about strategic activities,” said a person with knowledge of the situation.
The shake-up comes as Atos has been in talks to sell its lossmaking legacy operation known as Tech Foundations to Křetínský. The deal would allow Křetínský to take a 7.5 per cent stake in Atos’s remaining business, which would be renamed Eviden.
The complex arrangement, which would also involve Atos carrying out a €900mn capital raise to shore up its balance sheet, has been criticised by shareholders including hedge fund CIAM and UDAAC, a group of small investors. They have accused Atos of providing inadequate disclosure around the financials of the deal.
CIAM has filed a lawsuit, while UDAAC has written to ask French markets regulator AMF to take action.
Atos executives on Monday insisted they were still committed to closing the deal with Křetínský.
“At this stage it is all hands on deck and we are progressing towards bringing this matter to the shareholders for their approval,” said Atos chief financial officer Paul Saleh. But he added that, should the deal fall apart, the company had enough liquidity to get through 2024.
Atos also said it would “have to access the debt and equity capital markets” and contemplate additional asset sales if the deal failed to win shareholders’ approval. Executives, however, declined to say whether they would consider selling the company’s prized cyber security business.
Atos disclosed further details about the terms of the deal with Křetínský and the group’s liquidity. But there is a risk shareholders will not approve the capital increase given its dilutive nature.
Sophie Vermeille, a lawyer for UDAAC, said the contours of the deal with Křetínský “were economically absurd” and even the additional disclosures were not enough to “win back the confidence of shareholders”.
A group of French senators in August also came out against Křetínský taking a stake in Eviden, given the sensitive nature of its super-calculator technology used for national defence.
People close to Křetínský said he was willing to scrap this part of the deal, and that they had written a letter to the French government to indicate their position.
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