What does the new team intend to do at the head of the distribution brand?

The very indebted Casino group will change shareholders on Wednesday. A social plan is in pipes, which worries employees.

The Casino distribution brand officially changes hands on Wednesday, March 27. The businessman Daniel Kretinsky becomes the main shareholder. A new team is coming. This is a page that turns for Casino since the terms of financial restructuring, the owner since the 2000s, Jean-Charles Naouri, managing director, will therefore resign on Wednesday with immediate effect, and give way to a new team including the new director Philippe Palazzi will take the reins.

Their objective is to save the group by refocusing on local brands: small casino, monoprix, Franprix, Sherpa, etc. The 300 hypermarkets and Casino supermarkets were sold to the Auchan competitors, and intermarchés, some were taken over by Carrefour. Today Casino has nearly 30,000 people. To postpone the group on feet, the new team plans to inject more than 1.5 billion within four years.
Employees are worried what is understandable because a voluntary departure plan, that is to say a social plan, is in the pipes. It will probably be presented in April. Details are not known, but according to the unions, it could concern more than 5000 people, which is very important. The support, administrative, logistical functions are mainly targeted. For starters or thanked employees, the buyers of Casino provide supra-legal allowances, that is to say more generous than those provided by labor law. They also promise to maintain the siege, the historic cradle of Casino in Saint-Etienne, in the Loire, where Casino brings together, Thursday, nearly 1,800 people. This seat should however be considerably reduced.

The new team promises to regence its stores, to multiply the synergies between the different brands of the group, to put, for example, Naturalia products on monoprix rays, casino products at Franprix, etc. It also promises to look at the system of electronic boxes, which make purchases less friendly and annoy customers. Without completely deleting them, these electronic funds could be fewer and sign the return of personnel in the shops. As for the prices, sometimes deemed too high, the new management promises to rework the grids and not to increase them.