FRANCE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Sophie Vermeille and Jens Waldner, Vermeille & Co
the basis of Article 145 of the French Code of Civ - il Procedure: the court ordered Atos to disclose to shareholders a significant number of non-public and/ or legally privileged documents covering seven fiscal years (2017–2023). The court justified its decision by referring to “seri - ous and consistent indications” of potential account - ing and management failures. Although Atos has appealed the ruling, the decision is widely seen as unprecedented for a former CAC 40 company and reflects a growing judicial willingness to reduce the information asymmetry that often shields boards and auditors from scrutiny. A large-scale collective (opt-in) action has also been brought against Atos’ statutory auditors – Deloitte & Associés and Grant Thornton – before the Commer - cial Court of Nanterre in early 2026, with around 850 investors alleging misconduct and malpractice in the certification of the company’s accounts between 2017 and 2022. The case is currently pending. Orpea, the care home operator whose collapse is widely associated with the maltreatment scandal exposed in Les Fossoyeurs, offers a more complex picture than the public narrative suggests. Its business model relied on an aggressive real estate acquisition strategy financed with substantial leverage, whose sustainability was dependent upon continued asset appreciation. When these assumptions proved unreal - istic, the group’s financial structure quickly unravelled. The company’s restructuring, led by the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, resulted in the dilution of existing shareholders to approximately 0.04% of the share capital, effectively wiping out their investments. In January 2025, around 500 investors initiated pro - ceedings against the group’s former board members, alleging breaches of their duties of care and transpar - ency. These proceedings remain pending. Casino Guichard-Perrachon provides a particularly instructive example of the challenges regarding pub - lic and private enforcement in France. For more than a decade, Casino and its parent company Rallye projected the image of a financially resilient group. When Rallye filed for safeguard proceedings in May
2019, the difficulties were attributed not to structural over-indebtedness but to alleged speculative short- selling attacks. This narrative was initially accepted by the Commercial Court of Paris, which consequently approved Rallye’s safeguard plan in February 2020. However, subsequent events contradicted that inter - pretation. Before the safeguard plan had produced its intended effects, Casino itself entered safeguard proceedings in October 2023. The restructuring that followed eliminated nearly EUR5 billion of debt and profoundly reshaped the group’s capital structure. Regulatory enforcement proved limited. The AMF opened an investigation into trading in Casino’s securities as early as 2015, which ultimately led to no prosecution. A second investigation launched in 2018 has not resulted in sanctions to date, even though the group collapsed in the interim. Only the investigation into Rallye produced a sanction: a EUR25 million fine in 2023 for the dissemination of misleading informa - tion, a penalty largely rendered ineffective by Rallye’s subsequent liquidation. Criminal proceedings were eventually brought to trial in October 2025. In January 2026, the court convict - ed former CEO Jean-Charles Naouri and imposed a EUR40 million fine on the company, of which EUR20 million was suspended, rejecting the theory that the crisis had been caused by short-seller attacks and identifying mechanisms of artificial share-price sup - port. Casino did not appeal this conviction. Meanwhile, the restructuring implemented by Czech investor Daniel Křetínský left existing shareholders with approximately 0.3% of the restructured entity. Despite the elimination of nearly EUR5 billion of debt, the group is already expected to undergo a further financial restructuring. This situation illustrates the structural difficulty of restoring the viability of a com - pany whose financial difficulties were concealed for many years. In parallel, civil proceedings are currently pending before the Commercial Court of Paris against the former management of Casino, the company itself, members of the board of directors and the compa - ny’s statutory auditors. These proceedings, brought
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