Casino: The Rise and Fall of the Nauri System

A cataclysm for the casino group (Monoprix, Franprix, Cdiscount, etc.) and its 208,000 employees. The group announced on Friday, May 26, that the president of the Paris Commercial Court had decided a day earlier to initiate conciliation in favor of it and some of its subsidiaries. “The purpose of this procedure is to allow the casino group to engage in discussions with its creditors in a legally protected framework.”– said the distributor.

Maître Aurélia Perdereau and Maître Marc Sénéchal are appointed conciliators. Debt reduction, which reached 6.4 billion euros, is a necessary condition for the group’s survival. At the same time, discussions with buyers are ongoing. Rallye, the casino’s parent company, has also been subject to reconciliation since May 22.

At the same time, on the same Friday, the Casino Group extended its already existing partnership with the Intermarché Group, headed by Thierry Cotillard. Les Mousquetaires has committed to provide a €100 million equity investment to the troubled company and to buy outright the group’s stores worth at least €1.05 billion, or more than 15% of Casino’s hypermarkets and supermarkets business.

On December 17, 2015, the day the financial analysis against the casino was released, the injury proved fatal. Although the stock was quoted at more than 97 euros in July 2014, American speculator Muddy Waters estimated its “true” value at 6.91 euros. Crazy, they thought in Paris. But some coincidences make you dizzy. Shares of Casino closed at €6.76 on Monday, May 22, 2023. Thus, the market capitalization of the tricolor flagship rose from 5.66 billion euros, before the Muddy Waters fire, to 733 million euros.

However, Jean-Charles Naury, the father of modernizing French financial markets, seems to have achieved the hardest part: turning it into a prominent grocer. It is indeed a coincidence that “Rivoli” invested in the distribution sector – as the Ministry of Finance was then called. Backed by David de Rothschild, Enarque and the financial inspectorate created Euris in 1987 to succeed on the stock market. In 1991, he took over Rallye, a Breton brand that was in deep trouble. He is taken by a distributor to the casino, in the bosom of the Guichard family, in exchange for an equity stake.