Atos calls for help after plan to raise new capital falters

French IT services company Atos has called on a third-party trustee to help it negotiate debt refinancing with its banks after plans to raise €720 million in new capital through a rights issue fell through.

It announced it requested the appointment Monday, promising to give an update on the negotiations in due course.

Last year, Atos revealed plans to split itself in two, selling off its shrinking legacy managed infrastructure services business, Tech Foundations, while retaining its more profitable digital services and security business under a new brand, Eviden.

That project, though, has been hamstrung by a failure to reach an agreement with the potential buyer of Tech Foundations, and by dissent within the company about the best way forward.

Last month, those struggles led Atos to appoint a new CEO, its fourth in little more than a year.

Paul Saleh, previously the company’s CFO, was named CEO on Jan. 15, 2024.

On Jan. 29, Atos rolled over a €1.5 billion loan for another six months, the first of two allowed extensions, but it needs a longer-term solution. Saleh’s financial expertise hasn’t yet proven sufficient to reassure the company’s creditors, prompting Atos to seek help from the trustee — or mandataire ad-hoc in French — to reach an agreement.

Contacted Monday, the company said it was too early to identify the trustee.

The trustee will only be involved in negotiations over the company’s financial debt, and won’t have any impact on employees, customers, or suppliers, Atos said. If the trustee’s help isn’t enough, the company hasn’t ruled out using other legal protection mechanisms available. French law includes a number of provisions to protect debtors, including the procédure de sauvegarde, which bears some similarities to a reorganization under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, allowing a company to continue operating while it reschedules its debts.

Atos is still discussing the sale of Tech Foundations with EP Equity Investment. One sticking point is Atos wants to hold EPEI to an earlier agreement to invest in the capital of Eviden, the more modern half of Atos, in addition to buying the legacy services business, something EPEI is now reluctant to do given Atos’s financial problems. “There’s no certainty these negotiations will result in an agreement,” Atos said Monday.

The two banks that offered to underwrite the €720 million rights issue of new shares, BNP Paribas and JP Morgan, won’t now given the changes in the market environment, Atos said.

Meanwhile, Atos is seeking to raise funds by selling off other activities, including the possible sale of its big data and security business to Airbus, which also has a cybersecurity business of its own.

Airbus is currently conducting due diligence checks, it said.