Kosmos in Zurich: Kulturhaus files for bankruptcy

Films such as “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” would be programmed on the screens underground, and bistro classics such as Croque Monsieur would be on the menu alongside hip vegan varieties such as “Red Cabbage Steak”. And in the forum for events, an event entitled “A Cold Welcome to Switzerland” would be announced for Monday in the “Cosmopolitics” series, a heart of the operation.

The ice-cold shower, which now reaches the regular audience of the Zurich culture center Kosmos, its crew and the shareholders, does not take place in the subjunctive discontinued immediately. The balance sheet of Kosmos-Kultur AG was deposited with the bankruptcy court this Monday morning.

“Hopelessly over-indebted”

A bold project, which began as a reach for the stars and gained a lot of sympathy, lands hard on the ground of business realities. The cut was implemented and communicated by the Board of Directors, consisting of the two entrepreneurs Roberto Feusi and Valentin Diem, who have only been in place for three months. In a communiqué on Monday morning, they write: “It is simply not possible to put the company on a healthy footing with this burden of debt.” That will “highly likely mean the end of a valuable cultural institution”. It is currently unclear whether the property will be used again for cultural purposes at all.

“The cosmos is illiquid and hopelessly over-indebted,” said Feusi, the chairman of the board of directors, explaining the emergency brake to the NZZ. This financial situation was initially not transparently explained to him and Diem. As soon as they joined the board of directors, they had an external report drawn up, which revealed, among other things, that personnel and goods costs were massively too high in relation to sales. A revision has now confirmed this result. “If we carry out our duties as a board of directors, all we can do is file for bankruptcy.” Diem adds that the obligations to the employees could still be met until December 4th. Unemployment insurance secures this for a further four months. After the unsuccessful attempt at restructuring, the number of employees – it was stated as 120 in previous years – now comprises 71 employees.

Diem is known in Zurich as the brain behind successful pop-up projects and co-operator of restaurants such as “Neue Taverne” or “Gül”, Feusi is, among other things, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the sparkling water company Gazosa Monti, founded by his great-grandfather. The duo was elected to the then orphaned board of directors at the beginning of September. In the spring, the five-woman board led by Monica Glisenti resigned after less than two years in office, the reason given being differences with the main shareholders.

After that, for a few months, the company’s head of finance managed the board of directors’ business on an interim basis, and the search for candidates was extremely difficult. It was said that nobody wanted to burn their fingers on the universally appreciated cosmos. Then Feusi and Diem, who were previously neither shareholders nor otherwise involved in the business, surprisingly made themselves available at an extraordinary general meeting.

Criticism from the shareholders

Even then voices were raised that the house was on the verge of bankruptcy. Individual shareholders also expressed their fear in the media that the cultural aspect would now be marginalized in favor of gastronomic appeal. In an interview, Diem now assures that the board of directors would have been increased with people from the cultural sector if the operational restructuring had been successful: “In the last few weeks we have tried everything to turn the rudder and intervened deeply in day-to-day business beyond our area of ​​responsibility. When we came, the house was effectively without operational management. »

Anyone who speaks to the two cannot shake the impression that this cultural center was a castle in the air from the very beginning. But didn’t they have to suspect the ramshackle environment they were voluntarily entering? “It was obvious from the outside that it was a case of restructuring,” says Feusi. “But we received no data, no financial statements, not even from the previous year. Therefore, we could not foresee the extent of the legacy and debt burdens that are now causing the project to fail. This house could certainly be operated economically, but not in the oversized form with the personnel expenses, as was the case. And not without subsidies either.”

“Everything indicates that the cosmos has always remained just a vision without sustainable feasibility.”

According to the latest knowledge, Diem does not want to use the word “mismanagement”. But he notes that a functioning business plan simply did not exist. The pandemic naturally exacerbated the basic problems because it hit the company’s business areas particularly hard. But she wasn’t the decisive factor, because even before Covid, massive losses were being made every year. The cinema operations are not the problem: In a nationwide comparison, they are now doing above average, also thanks to the cooperation with Neugass Kino AG (Houdini, Riffraff) in programming that was launched a year ago and has been intensified in the last three months.

“Everything indicates that the cosmos has always remained just a vision without sustainable feasibility,” the statement reads. “The vision was great,” Diem clarifies in an interview, “otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten involved. The cosmos has the potential to help shape the city in the area of ​​tension between Europaallee and Langstrasse, as a platform for dialogue. This end hurts all the more, we didn’t start for that. And for both of us it is the first bankruptcy that we have to accompany. »

Organizers like those of the multi-day Zurich Philosophy Festival, which should have taken place in January, now have to either look for a new location at short notice or cancel the edition. Is there no hope at all that a solution can be found in the medium term? “The cosmos is closed and it will remain closed,” Feusi clarifies. He could not imagine that the bankruptcy judge would not initiate the bankruptcy proceedings. A solution with a haircut and a rescue company was worked out and suggested to the creditors, but they ruled out this possibility, especially the SBB as the builder of the Europaallee and thus the homeowner. It is in their hands what happens to the property and the infrastructure. As an interest-bearing loan, SBB also advanced half of the CHF 16 million invested in the project before it opened. In other ways, too, they made sure that this flagship project received favorable conditions in their controversial new part of the city. The operating loan comes from the ZKB.

In a written statement to this newspaper, the SBB expressed its regret and stated that it had supported the project from the start. “Unfortunately, despite the constant support, Kosmos has not managed to run the business independently. The Europaallee is a lively place today. The cosmos also contributed to this. The new use at this location should achieve something similar.”

And what do key figures from the shareholder base think of the situation? Steff Fischer, a shareholder from the very beginning and recently noticed as a warning about the conditions in the Kulturhaus, is deeply disappointed, but does not want to comment publicly. He thinks he’s already said everything. The child psychologist François P. Chappuis, who only became the main shareholder this year, is very reserved on the phone and does not want to comment.

Quarrels and a riddle

The fact that the cultural center has liquidity problems is not new knowledge. This has been discussed repeatedly in recent years. The company would hardly have survived the pandemic without the goodwill of SBB and shareholders, some of whom are said to have written off part of the loans granted and made so-called bridging contributions. Now they too are faced with a heap of shards.

In addition to frequent personnel changes, public quarrels have also caused unrest in recent years, which stood in strange contrast to self-promotion as a meeting place that “creates space for discourse, contemplation and entertainment”. They took place among the shareholders, but also between the two founders, Bruno Deckert and Samir, who had now reached retirement age. When the Kosmos was opened with a lot of euphoria in autumn 2017, they still seemed like one heart and one soul. However, this business partnership crumbled more and more until they finally got caught up in power struggles and totally overthrew each other.

Deckert left the company in 2020 and disposed of his block of shares, the same applies to co-founder and managing director Martin Roth. Both contradict the presentation of the current board of directors that the house was economically wrong from the start. According to her detailed account, the decline only began two years ago – and by no means only because of Covid, the effects of which were initially alleviated, among other things, by an epidemic insurance that was happily taken out.

With Deckert gone, filmmaker Samir stayed on and continued to make waves before his influence waned. After he last applied in vain for a seat on the board of directors, a month ago he announced his retirement from the management of the “Kosmopolitics” series, the last remaining task. He justified this in a letter by describing his non-election as “disregard for the rights of an important part of the shareholders”.

Much has been puzzled over the last five years as to which worm could be in the cosmos. Actually, so many people think, the offer seems to be right: the house is lively and diverse, it offers the most comfortable cinemas in the city and an inspiring program in an inspiring location. If bankruptcy is actually unavoidable, it will have to be worked out how this disaster came about and how the company got into the debt trap.