Saint-Étienne
Food fight: Two rival teams of investors are tussling over who takes control of supermarket group Casino, France’s sixth-biggest food retailer by market share, say Irene Garcia Perez and Angelina Rascouet on Bloomberg. Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky (pictured), together with French entrepreneur Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, who are both existing shareholders, has increased his previous offer to inject €1.1bn of equity into the struggling business. His latest offer is worth €1.8bn, consisting of debt converted into equity and €1.35bn in cash. Opposing him is telecom tycoon Xavier Niel, banker Matthieu Pigasse and franchise-owner Moez-Alexandre Zouari, who have offered to invest €900m, with additional contributions from unsecured creditors in return for a larger stake in the restructured company. Whatever the outcome, it is the end of Jean-Charles Naouri’s control of Casino, “a company he built through years of debt-fuelled expansion”. The firm’s unsecured bonds are trading at around five cents on the euro, meaning bondholders are braced to be wiped out.
Across the Channel, Britain’s second-biggest supermarket, Sainsbury’s, has regained some
