By Michel Rose
PARIS (Reuters) – Talks to sell parts of French company Atos to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky are raising concerns among some French lawmakers, who say the deal risks undermining the independence of France’s nuclear deterrence.
Atos said this week it was in talks to sell its loss-making legacy operations to Kretinsky in a 2 billion-euro ($2.20 billion) deal that will refocus the struggling French company on its cybersecurity and cloud assets, and cut its debt.
The deal would also give the billionaire a 7.5% stake in the remaining business, which would be renamed Eviden.
A group of lawmakers from the Les Republicains conservative party said in a column published in Thursday’s Le Figaro that the deal threatened to allow the French supercomputers, made by Atos and used for virtual nuclear tests, to fall into foreign hands.
“The possibility of seeing such a powerful foreign player get close to our ultra-sensitive military capacities deserves our attention,” the group of lawmakers led by senator Cedric Perrin of the Senate’s defence committee said.
Lawmakers cannot block a sale of a French company, only the government can if it considers there is a strategic reason for doing so.
The French finance ministry was not immediately available for comment. Atos and a spokesperson for Kretinsky were also not immediately available for comment.
Kretinsky, who made his fortune in the energy sector, is expanding his vast empire in Europe and has been on a buying spree in France, setting his eyes on assets ranging from French retailer Casino to Vivendi’s publishing group Editis.
“There’s historical precedent showing you’re a minority shareholder one day and majority shareholder the next. There’s a real risk to our sovereignty,” Perrin told Reuters.
The lawmakers questioned why an alternative French buyer, a consortium of French companies Astek and ChapsVision, who were reported in French media to have been interested, were not given more consideration.
A source close to Astek said Atos’s cybersecurity business also hosted other sensitive assets crucial to French intelligence interests.
