The Casino group holds its general meeting this Wednesday in a troubled context

Worried employees and local elected officials, poor economic results, round of contenders... Casino, a distribution group from Saint-Étienne, is holding its annual general meeting this Wednesday in Paris, without anything significant on the agenda, but in a context fraught with uncertainty. On the agenda, no resolution concerning the ongoing negotiations with Teract and Intermarché or the desire of the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, already a 10% shareholder, to increase his capital.

But the CGT has called for a rally Wednesday morning near the Maison de la Chimie, in the seventh arrondissement of Paris, where Casino holds its general assembly. Objective, explained the central union delegate CGT Ali Eloued to AFP: "to express [the] concerns [of employees] on the sustainability of jobs and the revaluation of wages".

Because the financial situation of Casino, which employs 200,000 people worldwide, a large quarter of whom are in France, seems increasingly precarious, to the point that the rating agency S&P further lowered the group's rating on Tuesday night, meaning that it was close to no longer being able to repay its debts. At the end of April, its parent company, Rallye, as well as the cascade of holdings by which the group's CEO Jean-Charles Naouri holds control, obtained from the Paris Commercial Court the opening of an amicable procedure to renegotiate their large debt. Casino has indicated that it is studying the possibility of opening conciliation proceedings with its creditors.

For Daniel Kretinsky, who proposed on April 24 to inject 750 million euros into the group (via a reserved capital increase of more than 1 billion euros in total), the financial situation of Casino "is no longer tenable without rapid intervention," he said in Le Point. A speech about which Casino, which "analyzes the proposal" of the Czech billionaire, did not comment. According to La Lettre A on Tuesday evening, the businessman is even preparing for this week an offer to some creditors, large institutions and investment funds, to accelerate the restructuring with an accelerated safeguard procedure.

See alsoDaniel Kretinsky triggers a battle for control of Casino

Stock market price at half-mast

Daniel Kretinsky is not the only contender: Casino is discussing a possible merger with the Teract group (Jardiland, Gamm vert, Boulangeries Louise), whose majority shareholder is the agri-food giant InVivo. At the end of April, the third largest supermarket chain in France, Intermarché, joined these discussions.

Casino employs 200,000 people worldwide, a quarter of whom are in France. The group published poor results for its first quarter of 2023, with sales down 2.3% in France in a context of high inflation, which mechanically inflates the turnover of mass distribution. Its debt has not decreased compared to the end of 2022, stable at 4.5 billion euros.

The group's financial results weigh on Casino's share price, which was close to 80 euros in the mid-2010s and was still worth more than 20 euros at the beginning of 2022 but is trading around 7 euros today. At the General Meeting of Shareholders in May 2022, some small shareholders took advantage of the Q&A session to express their dissatisfaction.

It should be noted that the group has been targeted since February 5, 2020 by a preliminary investigation of the counts of "manipulation of organized gang prices, active and passive private corruption" and "insider trading committed during 2018 and 2019", had indicated in March to AFP the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF), questioned on press information.