Signa‘s series of bankruptcies” title=”First domino to fall for Signa’s series of bankruptcies”/>
First domino to fall for Signa’s series of bankruptcies
©APA/dpa
The construction stop on the half-finished Hamburg skyscraper Elbtower and the insolvency of the sports webshop group Signa Sports United on October 27, 2023 are considered by market observers to be the first dominoes to fall in the decline of the Signa real estate group led by the Tyrolean investor Réné Benko. A year later, the construction site in Hamburg is still standing still. Individual Signa Sports United online retailers have been sold and the majority of employees have lost their jobs.
The German construction company Lupp stopped work on the prestigious Hamburg project in HafenCity exactly a year ago because of outstanding Signa payments. The Elbtower was supposed to be 245 meters high, the shell is currently around 100 meters high. Signa estimated the total costs at the start of construction at 1 billion euros. The project was officially stopped in January 2024 because the Elbtower company also filed for bankruptcy following the insolvency of the flagship Signa Prime.
An investor solution for the Elbtower will soon be found. “We still have until October 31st, by which time our consortium would like to make an offer to purchase the Elbtower to the insolvency administrator,” Hamburg real estate entrepreneur Dieter Becken recently told the German “Abendblatt”. The Signa investor and logistics billionaire Klaus-Michael Kühne also expressed interest in completing the Elbtower with a consortium in the summer.
After the insolvency of Signa Holding at the end of November 2023 and of Signa Prime and Signa Development at the end of December 2023, the construction site at the Lamarr department store and hotel project in Vienna also came to a standstill. The Viennese investor Georg Stumpf only recently took over the unfinished Signa construction project on Vienna’s Mariahilfer Straße – according to “Kurier” for 100 million euros.
In addition to the major real estate projects, the Signa Group had taken over financially with its trading business – including Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, SportScheck, Signa Sports United. Together with the Chirathivat family’s Thai Central Group, Signa was involved in Globus in Switzerland, KaDeWe in Berlin and Selfridges in Great Britain.
Signa Sports United included the retailers Tennis-Point, WiggleCRC, Fahrrad.de and Bikester, among others. With 80 online shops, annual sales of 1 billion euros were achieved at peak times, but in mid-2023 a loss of 180.5 million euros was reported. Tennis-Point, WiggleCRC, Fahrrad.de and Bikester were sold as part of the insolvency proceedings.
Signa Sports United was registered as a stock corporation in the Netherlands, but had its headquarters in Berlin and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Since the IPO in 2021, the valuation has shrunk from $3.2 billion (€3 billion) to almost zero at the stock market exit in October 2023.
Shareholders of the insolvent Signa Sports United (SSU) initiated proceedings at a court in Amsterdam in the spring. The German Association for the Protection of Securities Ownership (DSW) and Dutch investor advocates want to go to court to seek compensation for what they believe to be damaged shareholders.
The insolvency claims in Austria filed by creditors against Signa companies and Benko as an entrepreneur as well as the Benko Private Foundation recently amounted to over 25 billion euros. However, only a fraction was recognized by the liquidators. Other Signa companies are insolvent in Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
