Casino has four offers for GreenYellow energy business- source

By Dominique Vidalon

PARIS (Reuters) – French retailer Casino has received four preliminary offers of around 1.5 billion euros ($1.56 billion) each for its renewable energy business GreenYellow, including one from Ardian, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

Casino, which has embarked on a plan to sell non-core assets to cut debt, said last month that it had launched a process to sell GreenYellow, aiming to seal a potential deal by the end of the year.

The source said investmentn fund Ardian had made its offer at the end of last week. Ardian declined to comment.

A decision on the deal is expected next month, the source said.

Last week, two sources said Macquarie, I Squared Capital and Dutch company SHV had made preliminary bids for GreenYellow as of June 2 at around 1.5 billion euros each, and that other potential bidders had asked for more time to put together a possible offer.

($1 = 0.9602 euros)

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon. Editing by Jane Merriman)