Atos stumbles again as French government says 'non' to purchase of key assets

Struggling IT services giant Atos says it is continuing discussions with the French state after failing to reach an agreement for the government to buy key assets from its Big Data & Security (BDS) division.

Atos, which is embarking on a restructuring plan after suffering several years of declining revenue and rising losses, says the non-binding confirmatory offer it received from the French state expired on October 4, without the parties reaching an agreement.

That offer, which was mooted earlier this year but officially received in June, would see the Paris government take control of certain strategic assets from the ailing business to ensure they remain under French control, for which it was willing to stump up €700 million ($748 million).

These comprise the Advanced Computing, Mission-Critical Systems, and Cybersecurity activities of the BDS division, which are involved in IT projects for the French military and other areas of the public sector.

Atos says it has offered to continue discussions and sent the government a new proposal compatible with its financial restructuring plan. The latter was put together based on an assumption that these activities would be preserved within the Atos Group, and the expiry of the offer has no impact on the wider financial restructuring process, it claims.

The company will issue a further update should these discussions prove successful, but it warns that any potential sale of BDS assets will be subject to regulatory approval by the Nanterre Commercial Court, where Atos is due to submit an accelerated safeguard plan on October 15.

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Atos finally secured funding from its creditors in July for a restructuring plan to rescue the company following a roller coaster few months in which a previous deal with Atos's largest shareholder fell through. The consortium it was part of withdrew from discussions in June.

Attempts by Atos to raise revenue by flogging parts of the business to other interested parties also failed, with Euro aerospace biz Airbus withdrawing its offer for BDS in March, and negotiations to sell the legacy IT operations to Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský and his EP Equity Investment (EPEI) similarly collapsing in February.

These moves follow an ill-fated attempt announced by the company a couple of years ago to reorganize itself into two separately listed companies, with the BDS operations trading as Eviden (initially Evidien), and the legacy Datacenter and Hosting, Digital Workplace, Unified Comms, and Business Process Outsourcing operations to be called Atos Tech Foundations (ATF). ®