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The chairman of troubled French IT services group Atos Bertrand Meunier is set to resign, according to people familiar with the matter, throwing the restructuring and asset sales plans he championed into uncertainty.
Another Atos board member, former UniCredit CEO Jean Pierre Mustier, is lining up to take Meunier’s place, they said.
The reshuffle could be announced as soon as Monday.
Atos declined to comment. Munir, a former senior executive at private equity firm CVC, could not be reached for comment. Mastier declined to comment.
It’s unclear what the board changes mean for the strategy of the debt-laden group, which has struggled to turn around its business during Meunier’s tenure. Earlier this month, the company named a new CEO, its third in two years.
Shares in Atos, which sells technology solutions, cybersecurity and analytics to enterprises, have fallen more than 50% this year and closed at 4.88 euros on Friday, a record low. It also owns quantum computing assets that are considered strategic by the French government because they are used in defense programs.
The restructuring comes as Atos has been in talks to sell its loss-making legacy business Tech Foundations to Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský. The deal will give Křetínský a 7.5% stake in the remaining Atos business, which will be renamed Eviden.
The complex arrangement, which also involves Atos raising €900 million to shore up its balance sheet, has been criticized by several shareholders, including hedge fund CIAM and minority shareholder UDAAC. They accused Atos of failing to provide adequate disclosures about the deal’s financial information.
CIAM has filed a lawsuit, while UDAAC has written to France’s market regulator AMF to take action.
In August, a group of French senators also came out against Křetínský’s investment in Eviden due to the sensitivity of Eviden’s supercomputer technology. It was used to carry out work on the French nuclear weapons program.
People close to Krzetinski say he is willing to scrap that part of the deal, and they have written to the French government to make their position known.
Svlook
