FILE PHOTO: A French national flag flies near a logo of French IT consulting firm Atos, at the entrance of a company's building, in Angers, France, March 20, 2024. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo
PARIS (Reuters) -Thales opened the door on Tuesday to buying a limited part of the strategic assets of troubled French IT group Atos after the French government floated a rescue package.
The government provisionally offered at the weekend to acquire various strategically important assets including Atos' Advanced Computing, Mission-Critical Systems and Cyber Products, and said it would also seek industrial partners.
Thales, a defence group partially owned by the French state, has repeatedly said it is not interested in Atos' computing assets known as Big Data & Security (BDS) because it does not fit its fast-expanding civil cybersecurity business.
But asked whether the situation had changed following the government's intervention and search for potential partners, Chief Financial Officer Pascal Bouchiat said Thales could look at limited defence-related assets if they became available.
"We are not interested in BDS," Bouchiat told reporters. "It's true that inside BDS, which is essentially a cybersecurity services activity, there is another activity that is much more modest in size which is related to defence and security."
Speaking at a quarterly sales media briefing, he added: "If at some point this particular defence and security business, which is a minority of BDS, were on sale, then we would not object to looking at it."
He declined to comment on whether the French government had already approached Thales, in which it owns 26% of the shares and 35% of the voting rights.
Atos' shares have lost around 90% of their value over the last two years after a string of profit warnings, a revolving-door of CEOs and the collapse of potential asset sales. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday he was working to convince unspecified industrial companies to invest in the strategic Atos businesses, which provide super-computing and cryptography to France's military and secret services. Media reports have also said that planemaker Dassault Aviation, the biggest industrial shareholder in Thales, is also seen as a potential candidate to take part in a rescue operation for Atos.
BFM Business also reported on Tuesday that businessman Daniel Kretinsky would make an offer for Atos.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)
