The planned sale of Atos's outsourcing business, Tech Foundations, to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky is in serious jeopardy, reports the daily Les Echos in its edition to be published on Monday.

According to the newspaper, a "last chance" meeting between the two parties is scheduled in a few days' time, but the probability of reaching an agreement is considered very low.

Faced with major financial difficulties, Atos has decided to split its historical IT consulting and cybersecurity businesses.

Tech Foundations, which groups together the IT consulting activities, is to be sold to Daniel Kretinsky's EPEI group, while Atos plans to keep its cybersecurity activities, which include the BDS (Big data & security) branch, in a new entity called Eviden.

Earlier this month, however, Atos indicated that it had launched a due diligence phase with Airbus for the takeover of BDS, for which the European aircraft manufacturer is proposing an enterprise value of between 1.5 and 1.8 billion euros.

As for Tech Foundations, Atos CFO Paul Saleh acknowledged on January 3 that exclusive negotiations with EPEI were "taking a little longer than expected". (Written by Claude Chendjou)