Casino: the agro-industrial InVivo will throw in the towel, not Niel, Pigasse and Zouari

The agro-industrial InVivo and its 75% subsidiary Teract, which have been discussing a merger with Casino for months, will throw in the towel but not Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari, co-founders of Teract, according to the Letter A Thursday. Contacted by AFP, the Teract group (Gamm Vert, Jardiland, Boulangeries Louise) declined to comment. Casino also did not comment. Both are listed on the stock exchange and Teract had announced earlier in the week that it would make “the status of its discussions with the Casino group public” on Thursday evening.

The InVivo parent company, a union of agricultural cooperatives and agrifood juggernaut, could not be reached immediately. It has also been in negotiations since the end of March to acquire the Australian malt producer United Malt Group for up to 1.5 billion Australian dollars (930 billion euros). Teract is the result of the merger between the distribution activity of InVivo, essentially garden centres, and a financial investment vehicle launched by businessmen Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari, a major franchisee of the group. Casino.

This entity has been negotiating for several months to integrate the French activity of Casino, a distributor in great difficulty due to the weight of its debt. But another offer, made by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, Casino's second largest shareholder, has since emerged. The specialist media La Lettre wrote on Thursday that InVivo would not like to invest "a penny in the ongoing takeover operation" of Casino.

Nevertheless, Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari would like to propose to the creditors of the group of Saint-Etienne origin to reinvest alongside them in Casino, and would create for this an investment vehicle endowed with 300 million euros, still according to the Letter A. Daniel Kretinsky for his part proposed to certain creditors to pay around 40% of the debts due, according to press information at the end of May confirmed by a source familiar with the matter, through either cash or a conversion into shares, or a combination of the two.

Casino had formalized on Friday its entry into a conciliation procedure for a period of four months in order to renegotiate its large debt. The group, which employs 200,000 people worldwide, including a large quarter in France, is indebted to the tune of 6.4 billion euros at the end of 2022, including 4.5 on its activity in France, according to its official data.