No restructuring after all!

René Benko’s Signa Retail GmbH files for bankruptcy

(Bild: Sepp Pail, APA/Roland Schlager, Krone KREATIV)

The next sub-company of René Benko's Signa construct, the insolvent Signa Retail GmbH, has withdrawn its application for a restructuring plan without self-administration. This was announced by the credit agency Creditreform in a press release on Friday.

"The debtor withdrew the application for the restructuring plan in a statement dated 24.09.2024, the proceedings will therefore continue as bankruptcy proceedings," the statement reads. According to Creditreform, the assets will be liquidated by a liquidator.

Liabilities of 1.1 billion euros
Signa Retail GmbH has over one billion euros in liabilities. For this reason, the fact that the company was seeking restructuring proceedings without self-administration at the beginning of May caused some astonishment. Debts of 1.13 billion euros owed to 26 creditors were offset by assets of just 1.51 million euros, it was reported at the time.

Involved in Galeria and KaDeWe
Signa Holding, which has been insolvent since November 2023, directly and indirectly holds a good 95 percent of Signa Retail. The latter currently holds indirect stakes in various corporate groups in the retail sector. These include Galeria Kaufhof Karstadt, the KaDeWe Group, GLOBUS and the Selfridges Group.

Austria's largest insolvency
Since the insolvency of Signa Holding in December 2023, numerous subsidiaries have also become insolvent. In total, with more than ten billion euros in liabilities, it is by far the largest insolvency in Austria's economic history.

The liabilities of Signa Holding amount to five billion euros. It was followed by Signa Prime (4.5 billion), Signa Development (1.3 billion), the German department store subsidiary Galeria, the KaDeWe Group, the luxury department store Lamarr under construction in Vienna and finally Signa founder René Benko as an individual entrepreneur, against whom two billion euros in claims were made.

In total, there were a dozen insolvencies in Austria and over 100 in Germany in the network of companies, which is said to include over 1000 companies.