French company Atos, a key supplier to the nuclear industry, is on the verge of collapse putting at risk the jobs of 100,000 employees. The company is deeply in debt, its share value has plummeted and it could even be broken up, according to reports in the pink papers.
Atos is only 27 years old and was the result of the merger of several IT providers including Siemens IT Solutions in 2011, French supercomputing giant Bull in 2014 and Syntel of the US in 2018. By 2023 it had a revenue of over $12 billion.
Then the downfall began with a series of missteps. There was the failed acquisition of US competitor DXC Technology and then accounting errors that lost Atos more than one billion euros in market value, the reports said.
Add to that, over a period of less than three years, the company had no less than five CEOs, which eroded investor confidence.
The company was slow to shift to cloud computing, thereby losing ground to Amazon and Microsoft, cutting into its profits and leaving it with a debt of over two billion euros.
Atos’ future now lies in restructuring its debt, securing new funding and regaining investor trust. It must also sell assets and adapt to the changing IT landscape.
