The group has carried out numerous asset sales to finance its debt and could abandon its local roots.

By Le Figaro with AFP

Posted on 08/05/2023 at 09:54

Almost 125 years after the creation of Casino in Saint-Étienne, the atmosphere is not festive in the prefecture of the Loire in the face of the major financial maneuvers caused by the group’s indebtedness. Two days before the annual general meeting of shareholders, economic players, local elected officials and employees are worried about the turn that the largest private employer in the Loire could take, already fearing the disappearance of Casino’s local anchorage.

4,000 to 5,000 employees in the Loire

After numerous asset disposals intended to finance its debt, the distribution group still has 208,000 employees worldwide, including 4,000 to 5,000 employees in the Loire. Of these, around 2,000 work at the head office in Saint-Étienne.

For those and especially for the oldest who had already demonstrated against a hostile takeover attempt by Promodès in 1997, only one certainty: a new page is about to be written in the rich history of the company founded in 1898 by Geoffroy Guichard and resulting from a simple grocery store – Geoffroy Guichard who gave his name to the AS Saint-Étienne stadium.

This richness is illustrated by the “exceptional deposit in recent years of 200 linear meters of documents classified as historical archives by the Ministry of Culture“, tells AFP Pierre-Régis Dupuy, director of the Municipal Archives of Saint-Étienne. No more than the economic actors or the local elected officials interviewed, the staff representatives do not show a preference between the different candidates offering to come to the rescue of Casino. Whether it’s Teract, controlled by the cooperative group InVivo, the Intermarché group or even the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.

” READ ALSO – Daniel Kretinsky sparks battle for control of Casino

Job preservation

Their concern:job preservation“, emphasizes Estelle Silbermann, attached to the supply department at the head office and general secretary CFDT Commerce and Services of the Loire and Haute-Loire. On this point, “we have no certainty despite all these actors who come from everywhere“, she adds, emphasizing “employees’ sense of belongingat the sign.

«We have many colleagues whose couple, or even the whole family, works for Casino“, abounds Guillaume Touminet, employee of Distribution Casino France, also CFDT delegate. For his part, the mayor of Saint-Étienne Gaël Perdriau explains “wish, in all cases, that any changes in capital are made for the benefit of the activity, development and dynamism of the company and its employees“. The mayor asked to meet Jean-Charles Naouri, the president of the group.

Services already outsourced

Already, the head office workforce has been reduced, services having been relocated to the Paris region and assets sold. Another bad surprise: the abandonment at the beginning of the year of a project to operate a new warehouse of more than 60,000 square meters built in Forez (center of the Loire) for its subsidiary Cdiscount. However, Casino represents for the Saint-Etienne region “a large pool of executives“, some of which then create their own business, underlines Jean-Pierre Berger, the first deputy of the city, who worked there for 36 years. And “Casino is Saint-Étienne, so if the name of the brand disappeared (…), it would be a real loss for our territory“, he adds.

Between “at the casinoas we used to say,to unload trucks“, the septuagenarian ended his career there as director of human resources and insists on his role as a social elevator. However, the paternalism embodied by Antoine Guichard, the last leader of the dynasty until 2003, has since given way to much colder, even strained, relations between management and employee representatives.

Thus Guillaume Touminet and Estelle Silbermann confide that they have been “summoned to pre-dismissal interviewsafter having alerted the parliamentarians of the Loire and the press in 2019 to the risks linked to the group’s very high indebtedness. The CGT central union representative Ali Eloued announces for his part to AFP “a rally in Paris on Wednesday during the general meeting of shareholders to express (the) concerns (of employees) about the sustainability of jobs and the increase in wages».