The French government has made an offer to buy key assets of troubled IT giant Atos after the company late last week nearly doubled its estimate of the cash it will need to stay afloat in the near future.
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Atos confirmed on Monday that it has received a non-binding letter of intent from the French government to acquire certain assets of its Big Data & Security (BDS) business. Specifically, these products are for advanced computing, mission-critical systems, and cybersecurity products.
The Paris-listed biz said in an update today that an indicative valuation of the assets pegged them somewhere between 700 million euros ($750 million) and 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion). A due diligence phase will commence shortly pending a confirmatory non-binding offer in early June.
French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in an interview with the LCI news channel that Atos is involved in IT projects for the military and other parts of the state, so the government was keen to ensure that these did not fall under the control of foreign-owned entities.
