The bid to take over Casino Guichard takes a turn. The offer to take over the French distribution group Casino Guichard made by EP Global Commerce, a company controlled by the Czech magnate Daniel Kretinsky, together with the Fimalac group, the French investor Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, has finally ousted the alternative advanced by 3F Holding , which brought together the trio of French businessmen Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari.
3F Holding has withdrawn from the race to control Casino Guichard, giving Kretinsky and De Lacharriére free rein after reducing, according to a source familiar with the matter, the capital injection by 150 million euros, to 1.2 billion euros . Likewise, the duo has raised a lower conversion of guaranteed debt into capital up to 1,350 million euros, 150 million euros less than what was initially formulated. This offer would be more favorable to Casino Guichard’s creditors.
On its side, the listing of the shares of the Saint-Étienne-based group have been suspended on the Paris Stock Exchange pending the company’s issuance of a press release, as reported by the operator of the Parisian parquet. For their part, the French authorities do not seem inclined to block the transactions to prevent the company from ending up in foreign hands as it did when Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard planned to acquire Carrefour.
In this sense, last week, the Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, already stated that the State would not take part in either of the two offers. In addition, Kretinsky already has a presence in France through investments in the Editis publishing house, the newspaper ‘Le Monde’ or Fnac Darty.
