Atos has appointed its sixth CEO in three years, with Jean-Pierre Mustier replacing Paul Saleh at the helm of the financially-stricken IT company as it finalizes a rescue package.

Saleh had only been in the post since January, but has decided to leave the company with immediate effect. He has been replaced by Mustier, a former CEO of Italian bank UniCredit who has served as Atos chairman since October 2023.

The company said Saleh decided to move on after a French court opened accelerated safeguarding proceedings relating to the company’s proposed restructuring plan. Atos has been struggling to come to terms with its debt, and owes €4.65 billion ($5.05bn) to its creditors, €3.65bn ($3.9bn) of which is due to be paid back by the end of 2025.

Earlier this month it agreed a rescue package that would see its creditors take control of the business, with bonds and debt worth €3.1bn ($2.9bn) converted to equity. The creditors will also provide €1.68bn ($1.81bn) of new debt and €233 million ($250.7m) in new equity, a move that was finalized last week.

With the majority of its creditors having agreed the deal, the safeguarding proceedings will help ensure it can be completed with Atos running into further difficulties. A hearing has been provisionally set for October 15 to complete the deal.

“The opening of the accelerated safeguard proceedings marks the completion of an important step in the financial restructuring process of Atos and the start of a new era of recovery and development,” an Atos statement said.

Saleh, an American who formerly served as Atos CFO, replaced Yves Bernaert, who himself had only been in post for just over a year. Prior to this, the CEO role was shared by Nourdine Bihmane, Philippe Oliva and Diane Galbe.

The rescue package will see the value of Atos shares diluted significantly, but could mark the end of years of turmoil at the business, which is one of France’s most important technology companies.

It announced in 2021 that it was splitting into two separate business units - Eviden and Tech Foundations - as part of a turnaround plan designed to return the company to growth.

Eviden manages the firm’s cloud, cybersecurity, data, and supercomputing efforts, which are seen as potential growth areas for the business, while Tech Foundations oversees its less-profitable legacy managed infrastructure contracts. Atos has five of its own data centers according to Data Center Platform, three in France and one each in Austria and Germany.

Though the initial idea was to run Eviden and Tech Foundations as separate, publicly-listed, businesses under the Atos umbrella, both ended up on the market as the company tried to come to terms with its debt.

A planned acquisition of Tech Foundations by private equity fund EPEI fell through last year, while in March it was confirmed that talks between Atos and Airbus, which would have seen the latter purchase part of Eviden for €1.8 billion ($2bn) had been called off too.

A previous rescue proposed for the business, spearheaded by the company’s largest shareholder, IT consultancy Onepoint, collapsed in June.