Billionaire Kretinsky Is Said to Weigh Renewed Bid for Atos

Irene García Pérez, Benoit Berthelot and Albertina Torsoli, Bloomberg News

Daniel Kretinsky Photographer: Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images , Photographer: Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images

(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Daniel Kretinsky is weighing a renewed takeover offer for parts of Atos SE after walking away from a previous bid for a unit of the embattled French IT company, people familiar with the matter said.

Kretinsky’s decision may depend on whether Atos’ court-appointed mediator asks his group to take part in ongoing discussions with creditors about refinancing the tech company’s debt and restructuring its business, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

Atos’ biggest shareholder, Onepoint, has also expressed interest in a potential bid as part of these discussions, one of the people said. The considerations are at an early stage and may not result in bids, they said. The prospective offers were reported earlier by BFM.

The French public investment bank Bpifrance also could potentially be interested in investing in some healthy parts of the business, according to people familiar with its plans. It had previously told Atos investors it did not want to take a stake because the company’s leadership and M&A strategy were in flux, some of the people said.

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Representatives for Atos, Kretinsky and BPifrance declined to comment. Onepoint didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Atos has been holding discussions to sell off assets as it looks for ways to pay off billions of euros in debt. The company said this week that talks with Kretinsky’s EPEI over the sale of its legacy IT services unit, Tech Foundations, had ended when the two parties failed to agree on terms and pricing. Airbus SE is also in discussions about buying Atos’ big data and cybersecurity businesses.

Atos shares have plunged 84% in the past year, giving the company a market value of €256.3 million ($276.7 million).

The fate of Atos is now in the hands of a court-appointed mediator, Helene Bourbouloux, who will discuss options with the banks of the highly indebted group. France’s finance ministry is also involved in overseeing the process as the government seeks to keep strategic assets under French ownership.

Atos named three new directors to its board this week. They include Onepoint’s founder David Layani and Helen Lee Bouygues, president of LB Associés and a corporate restructuring expert, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

(Updates to add stock performance in seventh paragraph.)