The rise and fall of Atos, the European tech champion now €4.65 billion in debt

Now we’re going to bring you some business news on the program. Sean Pellegrance joining us. He’s going to focus today on one French company that was once heralded as a national tech champion, but it’s now fallen on. Pretty tough times, isn’t it, Sean? I’m talking about Atos here. First off, who are they? What do they actually do? So Stuart, Atos is an IT services and consulting company. They provide a wide range of services, some of which are critical for the French government. The state is one of their major clients. Atos operates, for instance, the supercomputers that run the French nuclear dissuasion arsenal. And they’re also the cybersecurity and data partner for the Olympic Games have been since 2002. They’re the they’re the ones who will keep the Paris Games this summer safe from any cyber harm. Emmanuel Macron has warned that Russia might undermine the Summer Olympics with a disinformation campaign, for instance. So its current debt situation isn’t just a concern for investors, it’s a concern for public officials too. So what’s gone wrong then, Charlotte? I mean, this is €5 billion worth of debt. It wasn’t too long ago in 2017, that the company was flush with cash and had a market value of close to €15 billion. That’s when its share price hit its peak. This was thanks to a series of mergers and acquisitions that took place under the stewardship of former CEO Thierry Bottle. But now the company is worth €226 million, down 98% from 2017. What happened is that investors started to question the seemingly endless strategy of buying up new companies and one after the other, especially when accounting errors appeared in the books of two US subsidiaries. Athos was growing with a wide range of new activity activities when the business of IT consultancy itself. Was shifting towards more cloud based businesses. Its value fell but its debt load didn’t. So what’s the plan now then? How’s the company going to try and dig itself out of this hole? Well, First off, that hole is over 4/4 and 1/2 billion EUR deep and 3.65 billion of which comes to maturity by the end of next year, but which could be, but it could be extended by five years under a new refinancing agreement. On Tuesday, the company said in a statement that it needed to raise €1.2 billion to keep the business afloat over the next two years. They’ll raise this via equity but also new loans. The plans come under criticism from shareholders who fear that too much of the company’s new funds will come in the form of equity, meaning the value of their own holdings could be diluted. Sean, thanks very much. Sean Pelagian, with that for us here on France 24, our business editor, more news coming up for you very shortly, so to stay with us if you can.