The French authorities seeks to purchase the entire struggling French tech big Atos’ actions that the state considers strategic, because the IT consulting agency strives to restructure its debt.
The authorities despatched a letter of intent over the weekend, and an official on the Finance Ministry stated on Sunday the state was concentrating on three of Atos’ actions – superior computing, vital programs and cyber merchandise – deemed to have strategic significance.
Atos secures communications for the French army and secret companies and manufactures servers to make supercomputers able to processing huge quantities of knowledge for analysis or to develop the nascent synthetic intelligence trade.
Atos stated on Monday it wants more money than beforehand estimated to remain afloat and welcomes a authorities supply to amass firm actions linked to nationwide safety.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stated the goal was to stop “sovereign activities” of Atos from “falling under the ownership of foreign actors.”
Atos stated the proposal values the companies at between 700 million euros ($750.2 million) and 1 billion euros.
The entities, a part of Atos’ prized cybersecurity unit BDS, make use of about 4,000 individuals and generate about 900 million euros of annual gross sales, the official stated, talking earlier than feedback by Le Maire in an interview with French news channel LCI.
“This weekend, I filed a letter of intent to acquire all the sovereign activities of Atos,” Le Maire stated, including he wished to see different industrial teams be a part of the French state’s potential bid for the actions, with out elaborating.
The consortium, led by France’s state shareholding company APE, would come with different “French sovereign players,” Le Maire stated, declining to call them.
There has been hypothesis within the French press that protection teams equivalent to Thales and Dassault Aviation may participate in a plan to safeguard the belongings.
The goal is to construct a proposal by June, the official stated, declining to elaborate on the estimated valuation the Finance Ministry had made in its indicative supply for Atos’s entities.
The anticipated supply is just not conditioned to the formation of a consortium, however the goal is to have one, the official stated. It was not clear what actual stake the French state would get in Atos’s actions.
Atos, which manages information and cybersecurity for the upcoming Olympic Games, is within the midst of a refinancing, which incorporates elevating 1.2 billion euros through fairness and new loans and can lead to vital dilution for present shareholders.
Shares in Atos, whose web debt stood at 3.9 billion euros on the finish of March, have plummeted over the previous two years after a string of revenue warnings, a revolving door of CEOs, and the collapse of potential asset gross sales, notably BDS and its legacy operation Tech Foundations.
Le Maire’s announcement despatched shares in Atos surging 14% after the Paris inventory trade opened. They have tumbled by 70% for the reason that begin of the yr.
Atos stated it now wants 1.1 billion euros in money “to fund the business over the 2024-25 period,” up from a earlier estimate of 600 million euros.
Source: www.dailysabah.com