Casino: Intermarche and Auchan want to buy out “all stores put up for sale”, all their employees will be “captured”

A project with “100% French” capital. Food distribution brands Auchan and Les Mousquetaires/Intermarché have entered into “exclusive negotiations” with their financially troubled rival Casino to purchase “almost the entire volume of the hypermarkets and supermarkets of the Casino group,” according to press releases this Monday. .

According to Casino, there are “313 stores” in which “all employees of the transferred stores will be transferred” to the Mousquetaires/Intermarché and Auchan group. The operation, “subordinated” to Casino’s ongoing financial restructuring, “could take place before the end of the first quarter of 2024,” the group clarifies.

Most of the big names in the food distribution sector in recent days have been linked to Casino, which, in dire straits, has said it is willing to explore offers from rivals to buy out all or part of its large format stores. and supermarkets. Only Auchan and Intermarché submitted an application to take over the entire park.

“Strengthen France’s food sovereignty”

“By joining forces to purchase the Casino stores, Auchan and Les Mousquetaires are implementing a project with 100% French capital, a project that will also strengthen French food sovereignty and support the agricultural world and territories,” the two brands said in a joint press release on Monday evening.

For its part, Casino indicated that the proposed sale would be carried out “on a fixed enterprise value basis of €1.35 billion (excluding real estate)” and that “the volume of integrated stores represents a figure for the total business volume for the year.” By 2022, approximately 3.6 billion euros excluding taxes (excluding gasoline) for 313 stores. “Certain real estate assets may also be part of the scope of the operation,” Casino further points out, according to which the money received from the operation will “support the envisaged financial restructuring, investments in the same volume and social support for the relevant employees.

The group, which still had 200,000 employees worldwide, including 50,000 in France at the end of 2022, signed an agreement in July to restructure unsustainable debt with a change in shareholding by March-April 2024. These are Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, Frenchman Marc Ladre de Lacharrière and the British fund Attestor, who are expected to take over on this day. But in the meantime, commercial performance had not improved much and the group, still led by Jean-Charles Naoury for several months, had to scale back its financial ambitions several times before saying it was prepared to sell the stores if rivals became interested.