Atos : les coulisses du duel final entre David Layani et Daniel Kretinsky
DÉCRYPTAGE - L’offre du premier, qui a convaincu une partie des créanciers du groupe, semble avoir l’avantage. Mais le milliardaire tchèque n’a pas dit son dernier mot.
La partie de poker menteur pour le sauvetage d’Atos entre dans sa phase décisive. Près de cinq mois après l’ouverture d’une procédure de conciliation pour apurer les 5 milliards d’euros de dette qui l’étouffent et pour lui redonner un nouvel élan, le groupe informatique entre dans la dernière ligne droite pour le choix d’un repreneur.
Il y a un mois, Atos recevait trois offres : l’une émanant du milliardaire Daniel Kretinsky, associé au fonds Attestor ; l’autre de l’entrepreneur David Layani, en consortium avec Walter Butler et Econocom ; la dernière d’un groupe de créanciers détenant une bonne partie de la dette. Depuis, la bataille d’influence fait rage entre les prétendants, chacun redoublant de manœuvres pour rallier des soutiens.
Layani en avance
Atos a fixé au vendredi 31 mai, à minuit, la date limite de remise des offres définitives. « Ce délai pourrait être repoussé de quelques heures, voire d’un jour ou deux, pour permettre aux candidats de boucler leur offre », confient plusieurs protagonistes. En attendant, Jean-Pierre Mustier, le président d’Atos, préfère s’en tenir au cadre fixé. Il a d’ailleurs déjà prévu la tenue d’au moins deux conseils d’administration ce week-end. Objectif : que cette instance décide dimanche soir l’identité du repreneur, en fonction de l’intérêt social de l’entreprise et des recommandations de la conciliatrice, Hélène Bourbouloux. Ce choix serait alors dévoilé lundi, avant l’ouverture de la Bourse.
Dans ce type de dossier, où les allégeances se font et se défont à la lumière d’éléments qui peuvent varier d’une heure à l’autre selon des intérêts complexes, il est difficile d’avancer un pronostic. Le projet porté par David Layani, patron fondateur de Onepoint, semble avoir l’avantage. Selon nos informations, les positions entre son consortium et les créanciers sont en train de converger. Mardi, le camp Layani pointait un différentiel de 500 millions d’euros entre sa vision et celle des banques, sur le montant maximum d’écrasement de dette.
Un point d’équilibre a semble-t-il été trouvé mercredi sur le chiffre de 2,8 milliards d’euros (contre 3,2 milliards pour Layani initialement, et 1,8 pour les créanciers), avec un groupe représentant 50 % des porteurs de dette d’Atos. Le consortium de David Layani apporterait également 350 millions d’euros sous la forme d’augmentation de capital sur le 1,7 milliard de nouveaux financements, ce qui lui donnerait entre 20 et 30 % du capital d’Atos. La cible des 30 %, que voulait atteindre David Layani, doit encore être discutée. « Nous sommes en train de finaliser cette négociation », souligne-t-on dans son entourage.
Daniel Kretinsky n’a toutefois pas dit son dernier mot. Il part de plus loin : d’un côté, l’effort qu’il demande aux porteurs de dette est plus important ; de l’autre, il n’écarte pas la perspective d’un démantèlement d’Atos, auquel les créanciers sont opposés. Mais les poches du milliardaire tchèque sont plus profondes. Mieux : la récupération par l’État des activités sensibles ou souveraines lui enlève une épine dans le pied. La reprise de ces actifs par l’homme d’affaires tchèque aurait suscité une levée de boucliers dans la sphère politique. Daniel Kretinsky prépare donc une dernière offre, a priori meilleure que celle qui prévoyait l’effacement de 4 milliards d’euros de dette sur les 4,8 milliards d’Atos. Il pourrait également proposer de mieux traiter les créanciers avec le produit des cessions, qu’il compte réaliser.
Kretinsky veut renverser la vapeur
Lors de sa campagne victorieuse pour la reprise de Casino, c’est dans les dernières heures des négociations, grâce à une offre rehaussée et au revirement du fonds Attestor, que Daniel Kretinsky avait réussi à distancer le projet concurrent porté par le trio Niel-Pigasse-Zouari. Dans le cas d’Atos, le milliardaire tchèque compte sur le soutien et l’influence de BNP Paribas pour renverser la vapeur. L’établissement a rejoint son camp, jugeant son offre plus sérieuse. Si la plus grosse banque française ne pèse pas assez lourd dans la dette d’Atos (3 % selon les observateurs) pour faire basculer le dossier à elle seule, son pouvoir d’entraînement est considéré par certains comme un atout.
Il y a quelques jours, BNP Paribas conduisait d’ailleurs le comité de pilotage réunissant une bonne partie des banques d’Atos. Avant d’en être éjecté eu égard à sa proximité avec « DK ». « Actuellement, BNP Paribas tente de rallier les banques les unes après les autres, et le camp Layani les décourage de le rejoindre », résume un observateur. Pour remporter son pari, l’homme d’affaires devra également convaincre les porteurs de dette obligataire, la procédure de restructuration devant être validée à la majorité des deux tiers par l’ensemble des porteurs de dette d’Atos. « Il faudra qu’il améliore significativement son offre. De nombreux obligataires ont acheté de la dette sur les marchés, avant que la valeur de celle-ci ne s’effondre. Ils auront du mal à accepter une grosse décote », souligne un bon connaisseur du dossier.
Un accord fin août
Il y a dix jours, un groupe d’obligataire a envoyé un courrier à Bercy et à Hélène Bourbouloux pour marquer son opposition au milliardaire. En réponse, Daniel Kretinsky et ses équipes sont sortis du bois la semaine dernière, notamment dans Le Figaro , dressant un portrait extrêmement alarmiste de la société. Ils ont pris à témoin les créanciers, en leur disant qu’Atos ne s’en sortirait pas sans un effacement maximal de dette. Remontés, Jean-Pierre Mustier et Hélène Bourbouloux, ont appelé tous les protagonistes à stopper les déclarations intempestives dans le dossier, soulignant l’impact « délétère » des « communications incessantes » sur la marche de l’entreprise.
En coulisse, chacun interprète la sortie des équipes de Kretinsky selon ses intérêts. Volonté de réveiller les créanciers sur la réalité financière d’Atos d’un côté, et les faire basculer chez lui, faute d’un prétendant qui sent que le dossier lui échappe, pour les autres. Une chose est sûre, la sortie des équipes du milliardaire tchèque a ajouté de l’huile sur le feu. L’État, dans une position de médiation au travers du Comité interministériel de restructuration industrielle (Ciri), a également appelé au calme dans cette dernière ligne droite.
Pour Atos, l’impératif est de trouver d’ici le 12 juillet un accord de verrouillage (lock-up) avec les créanciers et le repreneur sur les conditions de la restructuration financière. Et, après un examen minutieux des détails de ces accords de plusieurs centaines de pages, un bouclage définitif autour du 26 août. Cette date constitue en effet la limite de fin de la procédure de conciliation ouverte le 26 mars, qui ne peut excéder cinq mois.
Smart Bandages That Heal Wounds Faster and Talk to Your Doctor Are on the Way
Researchers are working on bandages that allow remote monitoring and deliver treatment with zaps of light or electricity
A new generation of smart bandages that could allow doctors to remotely monitor wounds, decrease scarring and speed up healing with a zap of light or electricity is on its way.
These high-tech bandages could eventually replace today’s usually simple constructions of gauze and plastic or latex, which can’t detect anything about the wound underneath and don’t do much more than apply pressure or hold a cream or ointment in place.
“We kind of are practicing medieval medicine in wound care. It’s a lot of poultices and salves,” says Dr. Geoffrey Gurtner, chairman of the surgery department at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson, who is among those working to develop a smart bandage. “There hasn’t been a lot of innovation.”
Smart bandages are part of the burgeoning wearable-tech industry, aided by more advanced microsystems and flexible electronics and fueled in part by $55 million in funding announced in 2019 from Darpa, the research arm of the Defense Department, to develop bioelectronics to help wound healing.
Now smart-bandage prototypes fill display halls at medical conferences. Many contain small electronics that can detect how a wound is healing and wirelessly transmit the information to a doctor. Some enable the doctor to remotely dispense treatments. Such technical sophistication likely wouldn’t be necessary for a simple cut or scrape, but could be lifesaving for severe wounds treated in the hospital or chronic wounds cared for at home.
“You could have healthcare centers that monitor these devices and contact the patients when there’s a potential problem and advise them on next steps,” says Dr. William Tettelbach, a wound-care specialist and president of the American Professional Wound Care Association. “I think it really is the future.”
Many of these inventions are in early stages—some in animal or human testing and others still in the lab—and far from coming to market.
“It’s a very hot area right now,” says Guillermo Ameer, a biomedical engineer and professor at Northwestern University. “When we first started in this area five years ago, there were very few people, very few labs, looking at smart systems or smart bandages,” he says. “Now we have many researchers and colleagues not only in the United States, but in China and Europe, that are pursuing this.”
Many of the smart bandages use a piece of electronic circuitry that goes into a pocket in the bandage itself. When the bandage needs to be changed, the circuitry would come out of the pocket and be put into a new bandage. The circuitry is often flexible, like that developed by a team of researchers led by Stanford University and described in a 2022 study.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University are testing a bandage in mice and rats that can detect infection and then deliver electrotherapy—a zap of electricity—to help speed healing. Some studies have shown that electrical stimulation can increase the migration of immune cells to kill germs and remove dead cells at the wound site, and randomized clinical trials have indicated that electrical stimulation can improve wound healing.
They envision the bandage sending reports via a cellphone app, says Yuanwen Jiang, an engineer and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is working on the project with Simiao Niu, an engineer and assistant professor at Rutgers University.
A prototype of a bandage to deliver electrotherapy, from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University. PHOTO: SIMIAO NIU AND YUANWEN JIANG
“The bandage will be able to transmit the signals of the wound in real time to the physician, so they will be alerted if there’s anything that’s dramatically off-track happening,” says Jiang, who was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford and co-author of the 2022 study.
The bandage could also have the ability to deliver antibiotics, which could be stored in a small capsule or hydrogel. If infection strikes, a doctor could remotely order a valve to be opened and the ointment delivered to the wound. The theory is, if the antibiotic is delivered early and the wound heals easily, it would help avoid an overproduction of collagen, which can produce scarring. The team hopes to start testing in humans next year.
At Northwestern, Ameer is a principal investigator with teams that are working on two smart bandages, both of which have been tested in mice and are now being tested on pigs.
One dispenses a drug—in this case, a compound called panthenol citrate, which Ameer says has antioxidant and antibacterial properties and can encourage blood-vessel growth.
Researchers at Northwestern University have developed electrodes to detect how fast a wound is healing and transmit information to the doctor, who can program therapy remotely. PHOTO: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
The other smart bandage has two electrodes—a flower-shaped one on top of the wound and a ring-shaped one around it—that send out electrical currents to measure how moist it is. Moisture indicates the wound is still trying to heal, and a drier environment indicates healing is further along.
The bandage wirelessly transmits the moisture levels to the doctor, who can remotely program the electrodes to deliver electrotherapy, promoting the growth of new skin cells and blood vessels.
A tiny coil in the bandage, similar to those used to wirelessly charge cellphones, powers the system, and the entire electrical apparatus is covered with a protective transparent tape. With electrodes made from a metal called molybdenum, which is thin enough to biodegrade, the entire bandage dissolves when its job is done. The researchers hope to start human testing next year on both bandages.
In other technologies, a team at the University of Southampton in England is developing a bandage that uses tiny LED lights to emit ultraviolet-C light, sterilizing the wound as it heals. The bandage isn’t yet in animal trials.
An early prototype of the ultraviolet-light bandage under development at the University of Southampton. PHOTO: MAHMOUD WAGIH
Smart bandages might even go beyond wounds. The Southampton team, led by engineering professor Steve Beeby, is also working on a bandage to monitor atopic dermatitis, a common type of eczema that causes cracked, dry skin, using a sensor that detects moisture levels in the skin. It sends that information to doctors, who can use it to help determine whether a treatment is working.
Smart bandages could cost more to produce than traditional devices, and it is too early to say how they would be covered by insurance. But researchers say early detection and care for infections could ultimately save lives and medical costs. Diabetics make up a large portion of those suffering from wound complications, with an estimated 160,000 hospitalizations for amputations among diabetic adults in 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Medicare expenditures for all chronic wounds in 2019 amounted to an estimated $22.5 billion, according to a study published in the Journal of Medical Economics.
“I’ve seen patients that have had wounds for 10 or 20 years, and they’ve probably racked up millions of dollars, one hospital, one [doctor] visit at a time,” says Gurtner of the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson. A bioengineer as well as a surgeon, he is developing a smart bandage born of his experience at weekly wound clinics. “I see patients on Tuesday, and they look good, everything looks good—they’re healing. And then you see them the following Tuesday, and they have rip-roaring cellulitis, and you have to send them to the emergency room to get an amputation,” he says. “At some point between those two moments in time, something changed.”
Dr. Geoffrey Gurtner of the University of Arizona-Tucson is working on a smart bandage with engineers at Stanford University that uses electrical stimulation and biosensors. PHOTO: FLEUR MATURO
Gurtner is developing a bandage along with engineers at Stanford University, where he is on the emeritus faculty. It uses electrical stimulation and biosensors to help increase blood flow to the injured tissue, close wounds more quickly and reduce infection. A thin electrical layer contains sensors, an electrical stimulator and wireless circuitry to power the electronics and provide Bluetooth transmission of data. Together, they measure the wound’s healing process, increasing electrical stimulation if the wound becomes infected or is healing too slowly.
In March, Gurtner’s team started testing the device in humans. They expect the tests to conclude in 18 months, and then they will apply for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
One ultimate goal would be for the smart bandage to fix the problem without a doctor being involved at all. Gurtner—who has $1.8 million in funding from the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a collaboration of the Defense Department, academia and private industry—envisions his smart bandage being used to detect and treat infection in soldiers wounded on the battlefield.
Kim Jong Un’s Balloon Barrage: Bags of Excrement Fly Into the South
Pyongyang floats ‘filth’ over the border, protesting activists who had earlier sent antiregime leaflets and K-pop into North Korea
SEOUL—An unusual sight drifted into South Korean skies on Wednesday: Large white balloons carrying plastic bags of North Korean trash. Some contained something even more vile.
The air deliveries from North Korea were detected the prior evening, Seoul’s military said, triggering emergency warnings around 11:30 p.m. to border-town residents to avoid going outdoors because of “suspicious objects” floating in the sky.
All told, around 260 balloons were found scattered across a country roughly the geographic size of Indiana.
Some journeyed more than 180 miles. One landed gently on a street—the pair of balloons and a clear plastic bag left intact. Another crashed through the greenhouse roof of a local grape farmer. Many others broke apart and spilled their contents onto sidewalks and streets: shreds of pink, blue and white paper, an empty laundry-detergent bag and dark clumps that looked like excrement.
Asked what the bags contained, South Korea’s defense ministry offered up only “o-mul”—which can mean either “trash” or “excrement” in Korean.
There was no doubt the sender was Kim Jong Un’s regime, which days earlier had vowed in state media to heap “mounds of waste paper and filth” onto its southern neighbors. Then, on Wednesday evening, North Korea took full credit for inducing the messy madness in a statement issued by Kim Yo Jong, the dictator’s younger sister and regime mouthpiece.
She expressed bafflement over South Korea’s assertions the balloons had violated international law, suggesting they be received as sincere presents. “I cannot understand why they are making a fuss as if they were hit by [a] shower of bullets,” Kim said.
Pyongyang had been clamoring for retribution following its own unwelcome arrival of a swarm of balloons cast off by a South Korean activist group, which sent 300,000 antiregime leaflets and thousands of USB drives containing K-pop music from the likes of boy band BTS.
Kim, the 40-year-old dictator, has sought to crack down on foreign-media consumption since glimpses of the outside world threaten to show his people how poor life is inside North Korea—a threat to his leadership’s legitimacy. And few issues enrage Pyongyang more than the leaflet-carrying balloons, which the regime condemns as psychological warfare and occasionally attempt to shoot down. In 2022, North Korea blamed the balloons for starting its first Covid-19 outbreak, claiming people had become infected after touching “alien things.”
Park Sang Hak, a North Korean defector who heads the activist group that sent the antiregime balloons, said his launches can reach cities more than 250 miles over the inter-Korean border. The leaflets, among other messages, call for the North Korean people to rise up against Kim Jong Un.
“We send medicine and leaflets carrying the truth,” said Park, of the Seoul-based Fighters for Free North Korea. “How inhumane is it that they send filth in return?”
Pyongyang and Seoul have been at loggerheads for years, though ties have worsened recently with Kim declaring South Korea his country’s No. 1 enemy in January. Since then, North Korea has continued conducting weapons tests—including a failed satellite launch late Monday—but hasn’t opted for direct military confrontation.
Instead, the Kim regime, as it roots out any ties to the South, has opted for more symbolic expressions of displeasure. That includes tearing down streetlights that once lined inter-Korean roads or adopting a new logo for the country’s flagship airline that once used an image of the entire Korean Peninsula.
The two Koreas have long dropped strategic messaging from the skies to gain a psychological edge. During the 1950-53 Korean War, the two countries collectively distributed more than two billion propaganda leaflets, according to U.S. military estimates. Often dropped from jet fighters, the North’s leaflets touted the merits of socialism; the South’s promised protection should soldiers surrender.
The information campaigns evolved over the decades. It was common in the 1980s for South Korea to airdrop leaflets showing young women clad in swimsuits—an attempt to make North Koreans envious of their capitalist neighbor. But now, South Korea’s offerings tend to highlight the Kim regime’s human-rights atrocities.
North Korea, which until the 1970s was more economically prosperous than the South, has stopped touting itself as a socialist paradise. Instead, its leaflets sought to insult South Korean leaders, changing the Korean-language spelling for “president” to include the word for poop. Now printed material poses less of a threat than South Korean activists’ K-pop-filled USB drives.
The Kim regime had last sent trash and excrement in balloons in 2016. At the time, one of the bags fell and broke through a car’s roof in South Korea. A North Korean compact disc that fell from the sky featured a photo of its missiles and a slogan that read: “A confrontation with us means destruction!”
The North Korean regime feels threatened more than ever due to rising attempts by its residents to watch smuggled South Korean content, which it fears could trigger a shift in ideology and diminished loyalty toward the regime, said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University, who has interviewed numerous North Korean escapees.
“Foreign content from South Korea has become the primary threat for the Kim regime,” Kang said.
Police raid European parliament staffer’s office in Russian influence probe
Guillaume Pradoura accused of playing ‘significant role’ in Voice of Europe scandal
Belgian and French authorities have raided the offices of a European parliament staffer on suspicion of working for Russia, the latest in a series of scandals involving far-right lawmakers and their alleged ties to foreign governments.
Police on Wednesday raided the apartment and parliamentary offices in Brussels and Strasbourg of Guillaume Pradoura, an assistant for a Dutch far-right MEP. Pradoura, a French national, is being investigated in connection with an alleged Russian influence operation run via the Prague-based Voice of Europe website, which has been banned from broadcasting in the EU.
“The searches are part of a case of interference, passive corruption and membership of a criminal organisation and relates to indications of Russian interference, whereby members of the European parliament were approached and paid to promote Russian propaganda via the Voice of Europe ‘news website’,” the Belgian prosecutor’s office said. The assistant “played a significant role in this”, it added.
Dutch MEP Marcel de Graaff posted on X that the investigation into his staffer Pradoura was a “complete surprise”.
“I spoke to my employee and he appeared not to be aware of this,” de Graaff said. “The authorities have not contacted me or him. To me this all comes as a complete surprise.”
Before working for de Graaff, Pradoura was a parliamentary assistant for Maximilian Krah, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) lead candidate in European parliament elections next month. Krah’s own staffer, Jian Guo, was arrested last month on suspicion of spying for Beijing. Both Krah and Guo deny the allegations.
Krah has suspended his campaigning following public uproar after comments he made in an interview with the Financial Times about not all SS members having been criminals.
Pradoura has also worked for France’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which expelled him in 2019 over an antisemitic social media post.
Pradoura did not respond to a request for comment.
De Graaff said he had “no involvement whatsoever in any so-called Russian disinformation operation. I have my own political beliefs and I proclaim them. That is my job as an MEP.”
De Graaf has made multiple pro-Russia statements, including after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which prompted the far right Identity and Democracy group to expel him in October 2022.
The ID group, which is led by Marine Le Pen’s RN, said at the time that it condemned Russia’s war and that with “statements like ‘Go, Putin’, and a number of similarly outrageous tweets, Mr De Graaff can in no way represent the ID group”.
De Graaff has continued making similar remarks. In a speech in March, he alleged that Kyiv was carrying out war crimes and supplying children to paedophile networks.
Czech authorities earlier this year banned Voice of Europe and imposed sanctions on pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, who they said was running the operation and using the website to pay politicians to peddle pro-Russian propaganda ahead of the EU elections.
Medvedchuk lives in Moscow after having been swapped for Ukrainian war prisoners. He has not commented on the allegations. Voice of Europe has denied being a Russian propaganda outlet.
Several other European countries including France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Belgium have also opened investigations.
The raids on Thursday constitute the first searches being carried out in Belgium in this case.
A spokesperson for the European parliament said it “fully co-operates with law enforcement and judicial authorities to assist the course of justice and will continue to do so”.