The agro-industrial InVivo and its subsidiary 75% Teract, which have been discussing for months a merger with Casino, 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 (brands Gamm Vert, Jardiland, Boulangeries Louise) did not wish to comment. Casino also did not comment. Both are publicly traded and Teract had announced earlier in the week that it would make "public the state of its discussions with the Casino Group" on Thursday evening.
The parent company InVivo, a union of agricultural cooperatives and agri-food giant, could not immediately be reached. 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 InVivo's distribution activity, mainly garden center, and a financial investment vehicle launched by businessmen Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Moez-Alexandre Zouari, a major franchisee of the Casino group.
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Not "a penny"
This entity has been negotiating for several months to integrate the French activity of Casino, a distributor in great difficulty because of the weight of its debt. But another offer, made by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, Casino's second-largest shareholder, has since emerged. The specialized media La Lettre wrote Thursday that InVivo would not want to invest "a penny in the ongoing buyout 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 has for his part proposed to some creditors to pay about 40% of the debts due, According to press reports from the end of May confirmed by a source close to the matter, through either cash, a conversion into shares, or a combination of both.
Casino had formalized Friday its entry into a conciliation procedure for a period of four months to renegotiate its large debt. The group, which employs 200,000 people worldwide, a large quarter of whom are in France, is indebted to the tune of 6.4 billion euros at the end of 2022, including 4.5 billion on its activity in France, according to its official data.
