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ELO and New Immo Holding (NIH) have both been declared successors for ELO/Auchan credit default swaps, with the succession date fixed at 11 August 2025.

The EMEA Determinations Committee (DC) reached this conclusion in its unanimous ruling today (26 September), following months of corporate restructuring and investor speculation.

Concern over Auchan entity CDS being orphaned by the restructuring caused their spreads to gap tighter in July, with five-year contracts dropping from nearly 600bps to the 176bps area, as 9fin reported.

Today, following the DC ruling, they are 6bps tighter on the day, at 174bps, according to market sources. On spread-to-maturity terms, ELO’s 5.875% 2028 senior notes are around 230bps.

The DC decision reflects the complex redistribution of ELO’s debt between its subsidiary NIH and other entities within the Auchan group.

The committee’s analysis rested on a combination of official company disclosures and independent reporting. A 24 July investor presentation set out plans and solicited consent to ‘push down’ debt from ELO to NIH, while a subsequent noteholder approval confirmed NIH had formally replaced ELO as issuer of €2.866bn of senior unsecured bonds on 11 August.

That date proved decisive: the DC noted this succession “alone would mean that NIH had succeeded to c.65.7% of the Relevant Obligations of ELO”, well above the 25% threshold. At the same time, ELO retained sufficient liabilities to ensure both entities crossed the criteria for successor status.

Supporting the picture, 9fin revealed that €150m of Schuldscheine would also be pushed down to NIH in the coming weeks, and ELO’s €500m term loan would subsequently be refinanced — according to the group’s investor presentation, the loan is “expected to be refinanced at Auchan Retail International (ARI) level”.

The DC also weighed whether the restructuring should be treated as a “Steps Plan” — a series of related debt transfers that together amount to a succession. ELO had first signalled its intent to separate Auchan Retail from NIH on 27 February, and its half-year results presentation reinforced the aim of achieving “financial autonomy” for the two groups.

To qualify as a Steps Plan, there must be at least two separate transfers of debt that would each give rise to a succession.

At first, the available disclosures left the sequencing uncertain — the investor presentation outlined that the Schuldscheine would be pushed down and the term loan was “expected to be refinanced at ARI level”, but did not explain the order or timing.

Clarity only came later, when 9fin published the article quoting an ELO spokesperson, who confirmed the Schuldscheine would be pushed down in the coming weeks, followed by financing discussions with banks on the term loan refinancing. That sequencing was a key piece of evidence for the Committee in determining how to treat the planned transactions. Ultimately, the decisive succession event was deemed to have occurred on 11 August, when NIH took over the €2.866bn bond issuance.

“Accordingly, the EMEA DC concluded that even if the proposed push down of the Schuldscheine forms part of a Steps Plan, the Succession Date occurred on 11 August 2025,” the statement said.

The ruling underlines the split nature of ELO’s restructuring. NIH inherits the bulk of the bonds, but ELO continues to hold nearly €849m of senior unsecured debt, due to be redeemed in January 2026. Those 2.875% notes are close to par, for a z-spread of around 140bps, according to market sources.

With both entities retaining more than 25% of the obligations, the Committee confirmed they are now joint successors.

The outcome reflects not just technical definitions but a wider corporate strategy. ELO is working to carve out ARI and NIH as financially autonomous businesses; NIH inherits the group’s longer-term debt instruments, reflective of the financing needs of a real estate developer, while ARI can issue shorter-term debt, which it requires to finance its highly seasonal business needs.

For credit market participants, the DC’s determination provides long-awaited clarity on how that restructuring maps onto the CDS framework — and confirms both ELO and NIH remain firmly in play as reference entities.