Casino: D-day this Wednesday for the takeover by Daniel Kretinsky and his allies

Epilogue of a long series and first day of a great challenge: the distributor Casino, managed for 20 years by Jean-Charles Naouri, passes this Wednesday into the hands of its buyers led by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, and the new team will have a lot to do to revive it. It was almost a year ago, April 24, 2023: Daniel Kretinsky, second shareholder of Casino behind the irremovable Jean-Charles Naouri (via Rallye and a cascade of holding companies), proposed to inject 750 million euros to rescue a group strangled by its debt, on condition of taking control and crushing most of the debts owed.

Since then, there have been numerous episodes: first a battle for the recovery, against the trio Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari; then the sale of all of the Casino group's activities in Latin America and almost all of the large format stores in France; then, an accelerated safeguard procedure... And finally this Wednesday, the dilution of current shareholders via capital increases which will allow Daniel Kretinsky, Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière and the Attestor fund to take control of Casino. On the same date, the distributor's debt must be reduced from 7.4 billion euros at the end of 2023 to just over 2.6 billion euros, with repayment deadlines ranging from January 2027 to the end of March 2028.

Also read: How Daniel Kretinsky's teams are preparing to take over the management of Casino

A meeting of the new board of directors of the distributor is planned for Wednesday evening, chaired by the former Macronist secretary of state Laurent Pietraszewski and including among its members the future general director Philippe Palazzi, or Athina Onassis, descendant of the famous Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis. On this occasion, the CEO since 2005, former senior civil servant and investment banker Jean-Charles Naouri “will resign from all his functions with immediate effect” and “without severance pay”, indicated the group.

His plans for the future are not known. He is a director of Fimalac, the holding company of Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière. Daniel Kretinsky, an energy tycoon who is increasingly eyeing distribution, was delighted at the end of February “to give resources and thereby breathing space” to a group that had been “resized, reorganized and deleveraged”. The Czech billionaire is already the largest shareholder of the German Metro and Fnac Darty and also owns the publishing house Editis and French press titles (Marianne, Elle, etc.).

Casino's activity has declined over the course of the sales in recent months. The distributor's French workforce will increase from 50,000 at the end of 2022 to 28,212 after the sale of numerous stores to its competitors Intermarché, Auchan and Carrefour. Furthermore, Casino almost no longer has an international presence. In total, once the transfers already recorded have been fully finalized, the new group will have a turnover of around 9 billion euros - that is ten times less than Carrefour -, half of which via the Monoprix brand.

It will have 8,634 points of sale under the Monoprix, Naturalia, Franprix, Viva, Spar or Petit Casino brands. The group is very strong in Île-de-France, especially in Paris where it represents 54.5% of the retail sales area, according to a study by the Atelier Parisien d'urbanisme (Apur). The buyers hope to restore good profitability fairly quickly, with the aim of multiplying the distributor's “Ebitda (gross operating surplus) adjusted after rent” by more than 7 by 2028.

They intend to achieve this via a “competitive and stable” pricing policy, expansion through franchising or even optimization of logistics. Around 1.6 billion euros of investments are planned by 2028, in particular to “renovate the store base”, often in poor condition after years of prioritizing debt reduction to the detriment of commercial activity.