Siemens is set to take an initial 15 per cent stake and a board seat in Atos Origin.

The deal, announced on Tuesday, will create one of Europe’s largest IT outsourcing companies in a rare Franco-German deal.

The move comes at a sensitive time for Franco-German Industrial relations, after the French Government tried to ban a Siemens contract awarded by Eurostar. The subject has caused strong protests in Berlin and is still very much a contentious issue.

The decision to allow Siemens to take a stake and a board seat in a group that provides strategic IT services to France’s 58 nuclear reactors may help to assuage these tensions.

The Atos Origin deal is valued at €850m ($1.1bn) It will see Siemens hand over its ailing SIS unit in exchange for a 15 per cent stake, plus a €250m convertible bond that can be transferred into another 5 per cent of Atos’s shares, and a €186m cash payment. Siemens has made a binding commitment not to sell its shares in the next five years.