Filed for insolvency proceedings
Is the KaDeWe group now also on the brink of extinction?
January 27, 2024, 4:55 p.m
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The series of bankruptcies in the Signa Group of the Austrian real estate investor René Benko shows no end: According to information from the business magazine Capital, the crisis does not go unnoticed by the luxury department store group KaDeWe. An application for bankruptcy is expected to be filed next week.
After the Galeria department store chain, the Signa Group’s German luxury department store business is also facing bankruptcy. As the business magazine Capital (online edition) reports, citing business circles, The KaDeWe Group plans to file for insolvency at the beginning of next week.
The application should be submitted in Berlin, where the department store group does most of its business, it is said in the circles. Insolvency experts expect that the insolvency court will appoint an administrator for the KaDeWe proceedings who is not involved in other Signa proceedings. The KaDeWe Group left a request from Capital for the information unanswered on Friday.
The impending insolvency of the KaDeWe Group is a consequence of the series of bankruptcies in the Signa Group of the Austrian real estate investor René Benko. Signa controls almost half of the shares in the group, which bundles the luxury department store business in Berlin’s KaDeWe, Alsterhaus in Hamburg and Oberpollinger in Munich. The Thai group Central Group has held 50.1 percent of the shares since 2015.
According to company boss Michael Peterseim from November, the KaDeWe Group recently had sales of around 800 million euros. The Central Group, which together with Signa has also taken over luxury department store chains in Switzerland and Great Britain in recent years, has been considered a possible buyer for the German luxury department stores since the Signa parent company went bankrupt in November.
Insolvency experts believe it is conceivable that the Central Group is hoping to gain favorable access to the Signa shares in the KaDeWe Group as part of the insolvency proceedings. In addition, the process could offer leverage to renegotiate the extremely high rents or, in the wake of the various bankruptcies in the Signa Group, to possibly take over the properties of the KaDeWe locations. At the beginning of the week, the Signa companies that hold the Alsterhaus and Oberpollinger and rent the houses to the KaDeWe Group had already filed for insolvency.