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A rescue bid for French IT services group Atos led by its largest shareholder has collapsed, casting the future of the troubled group into doubt once again.

Atos said on Wednesday that the consortium led by Onepoint, an IT consultancy founded by David Layani, had withdrawn a proposal that would have converted €2.9bn of Atos debt into equity and injected €250mn of fresh funds into the struggling company.

“The conditions were not met to conclude an agreement paving the way for a lasting solution for financial restructuring,” Onepoint said in a statement on Wednesday.

The decision by Onepoint comes less than a month after Atos had picked its restructuring proposal over a competing plan from Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínsky. Atos said on Wednesday that Křetínsky had already indicated he wanted to restart talks.

Once a star of France’s tech scene, Atos is racing to strike a restructuring deal by next month as it struggles under its €4.8bn debt burden. It has cycled through multiple chief executives over the past three years and its shares have collapsed. They were down 12 per cent in early trading on Wednesday.

Atos also said it had received a revised restructuring proposal from a group of its bondholders.

“Discussions are continuing with the representative committee of creditors and certain banks on the basis of this proposal with a view to reaching an agreement as soon as possible,” the company said. 

Jean-Pierre Mustier, former chief executive of Italian lender UniCredit, was installed as chair in October 2023 and given the task of putting Atos on a stable footing for the future. Since his appointment, several efforts to stabilise Atos through asset sales have fallen apart.

If talks with Křetínsky do restart, it will mark the Czech businessman’s third attempt to do a deal with Atos after an earlier plan to buy its lossmaking legacy business unravelled.

One of the people close to the talks said creditors had not necessarily become more receptive to Kretinsky’s plan given it cutting a larger chunk of the group’s debt.

The crisis at Atos has prompted the French government to intervene. It is currently seeking to acquire three parts of Atos that are deemed of importance to national security for up to €1bn.

Atos said on Wednesday it had concluded a deal with the French state that would give it so-called “golden shares” in a key Atos subsidiary, Bull SA. The agreement also gives the government the right to acquire “sensitive sovereign activities” in the event a third party acquired 10 per cent of the shares — or a multiple thereof — in either Atos or Bull.

An online gamer from New Jersey recently flew to Florida, broke into the home of a fellow player with whom he had feuded digitally but never met in person, and tried to beat him to death with a hammer, according to authorities.

The allegations leveled by the Nassau county, Florida, sheriff’s office against 20-year-old Edward Kang constitute an extreme example of a phenomenon that academics call “internet banging” – which involves online arguments, often between young people, that escalate into physical violence.

As Bill Leeper, the local sheriff, told it, Kang and the man he is suspected of attacking became familiar with each other playing the massively multiplayer online role-playing game ArcheAge.

The Korean game is supposed to no longer be available beginning Thursday, its publisher announced in April, citing a “declining number of active players”, as ABC News reported. But prior to the cancellation, Kang and the other player became locked in some sort of “online altercation”, Leeper said at a news briefing Monday.

Kang then informed his family that he was headed out of town to meet a friend he had made through gaming, Leeper recounted. The sheriff said Kang flew from Newark, New Jersey, to Jacksonville, Florida, and booked himself into a hotel near his fellow gamer’s home early Friday morning.

He had allegedly bought a hammer and a flashlight at a local hardware store, receipts for which deputies later found in Kang’s hotel room.

By early Sunday, Kang purportedly had put on black clothes, gloves and a mask, and he went into his target’s home through an unlocked door. He waited for the victim to get up to take a bathroom break from gaming – and then battered him with the hammer, Leeper said.

The alleged victim managed to wrestle Kang to the ground while screaming for help. The victim’s stepfather woke up after hearing the screams, rushed to his stepson’s side, helped take Kang’s hammer away and restrained him until deputies were called and they arrived, according to Leeper.

Deputies found blood at the home’s entrance and in the bedroom of the victim, Leeper added. The sheriff said the victim was brought to a hospital to be treated for “severe” head wounds while deputies jailed Kang on counts of attempted second-degree murder and armed burglary.

Leeper accused Kang of telling deputies that he carried out the violent home invasion because he believed the target to be “a bad person online”. Kang also allegedly asked investigators how much prison time was associated with breaking and entering as well as assault.

Attempted second-degree murder alone can carry up to 15 years. Leeper quipped that his only answer to Kang was: “It will be a long time before you play video games.”

Striking a more serious tone, Leeper urged people to be vigilant about and report to authorities any suspicious online behavior aimed at them. He also mentioned the importance of locking one’s home.

“This … serves as a stark reminder of the potential real-world consequences of online interaction,” Leeper said.