PARIS (Reuters) -U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital is looking at buying some key assets of French tech and software company Atos, reported French paper Les Echos on its website, citing sources.
Atos is in the middle of a restructuring and planned asset sale programme. Last month, the French government made a provisional offer to acquire various strategically important assets from Atos, including its Advanced Computing, Mission-Critical Systems and Cyber Products divisions.
Bain Capital declined to comment.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT:
The French government considers Atos as having assets that are of strategic importance to France.
Atos secures communications for the French military and secret services and manufactures servers to make supercomputers capable of processing vast amounts of data for research or to develop the nascent artificial intelligence industry.
Atos also runs data for the Paris Olympic Games.
WHO ELSE IS INTERESTED IN ATOS?
Thales said this week it could be tempted by Atos’ defence assets.
Media reports have also said that planemaker Dassault Aviation and Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky would be interested in Atos.
BY THE NUMBERS:
Atos shares are down around 70% so far in 2024. The company has a market capitalisation of roughly 220 million euros.
Atos, which has been in refinancing talks with its banks for several weeks, said this week that it needed 1.1 billion euros in cash to fund operations over 2024-2025.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-GuptaEditing by Chris Reese and Richard Chang)
