Furniture giant on the brink of collapse

Bankrupt again! Kika/Leiner slides into insolvency

(Bild: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)

The restructuring process of the domestic furniture chain Kika/Leiner has failed after all, the company has now filed for insolvency. Around 1400 employees are still affected after the company had already made massive job cuts this year.

This is already the second bankruptcy for the domestic furniture giant, which already had to file for insolvency in June 2023. "The company's own insolvency proceedings, the Signa bankruptcy, the ongoing recession and the cost increases since the takeover" are the reasons for the failure of the restructuring, the company announced in a press release on Tuesday.

It is unclear whether it will continue at all
It is now up to the insolvency administrator to decide whether and how to proceed, the furniture chain explained. Kika/Leiner had already reduced the number of employees from 1900 to 1400 in the course of the year.

The Kika/Leiner management had done "everything humanly possible to enable the company to continue as a going concern". Under the current circumstances, "the restructuring of the severely ailing furniture store is unfortunately not possible".

From former top dog into the maelstrom of Signa bankruptcy
Kika/Leiner has experienced turbulent times over the past ten years: there have been three changes of ownership, one insolvency and numerous store closures with staff redundancies. In 2013, the South African Steinhoff Group acquired the domestic furniture giant from the then owner family Koch. At the time, Kika/Leiner was Austria's second-largest furniture retailer after XXXLutz, with around 7,500 employees at 73 locations in Austria and Eastern Europe and a turnover of 1.2 billion euros.

However, Steinhoff ran into economic turbulence and sold the furniture chain to the Signa Group, led by real estate juggler René Benko, in an emergency sale in 2018. Signa sold the Kika stores in Eastern Europe to XXXLutz.

Benko had already acquired the former Leiner store on Vienna's Mariahilfer Strasse in 2017. The public prosecutor's office for economic affairs and corruption is currently also interested in precisely this aspect, as there are allegations that Benko acquired the property far too cheaply at the time.

This was followed by the collapse of Benko's Signa card house in 2023; in June 2023, Signa sold the Kika/Leiner properties to Supernova in Graz and the operational furniture business to retail manager Hermann Wieser. A short time later, the furniture chain filed for insolvency. 23 of 40 branches were closed at the end of July 2023 and over 1600 jobs were cut.

A further 500 jobs cut
At the beginning of October, the furniture chain announced that progress on the restructuring plan was slower than expected. An additional 500 jobs would therefore be cut. At the end of the day, this did not help either, and the former top dog is now once again on the ground.