Casino urges Brazil partner to meeting

The move comes after Casino's fiercest rival Carrefour said on Tuesday that it was weighing a complex deal to merge its Brazilian assets with those of Grupo Pao de Acucar (GPA).

"Jean-Charles Naouri has formally asked Abilio Diniz to call a board meeting of Wilkes in the coming days to discuss Brazil," a source close to the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

Casino and Diniz co-own Wilkes, a holding company which controls 66 percent of the voting rights of Grupo Pao de Acucar.

Diniz, the founder and chairman of GPA, has been trying to bring Carrefour into the company over his partner Casino's objections.

Casino has not yet gotten a response from its partner on the meeting, the source said.

The spat began when Diniz contacted Casino's arch-rival Carrefour without permission to discuss a possible tie-up.

Diniz and Naouri were initially slated to meet on July 4 to talk about that situation, the source said.

But the meeting was cancelled after Tuesday's surprise news that Gama, a company wholly-owned by an investment fund managed by BTG Pactual, one of Brazil's leading financial groups, and capitalized by the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), made the merger offer to Carrefour and GPA.

The move has angered Casino, which blasted the proposal as "illegal", and said it would examine in the next few days how to best defend "the corporate interests of GPA and its shareholders".

Casino already filed for international arbitration against the Diniz group last month, saying discussions with Carrefour would flout the terms of their partnership.

Carrefour's board of directors is expected to meet this week to review Gama's proposal, another source close to the matter told Reuters.

Copyright Reuters, 2011