Insolvency proceedings filed: Is KaDeWe Group now facing bankruptcy as well?

Filed for insolvency proceedings
Is the KaDeWe group now also on the brink of extinction?

January 27, 2024 at 4:55 pm

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The series of bankruptcies in the Signa Group of the Austrian real estate investor Rene Benko does not show an end: according to information from the business magazine Capital, the crisis did not go unnoticed by the luxury department store group KaDeWe. The bankruptcy filing is expected to be filed next week.

After the Galeria department store chain, the German luxury department store Signa Group is also facing bankruptcy. As the Capital Business Magazine (electronic edition) reported, citing business circles, KaDeWe Group plans to file for bankruptcy early next week.

The application must be submitted in Berlin, where the department store group does most of its business, as they say in circles. Insolvency experts expect the insolvency court to appoint an administrator for the KaDeWe proceedings who will not be involved in other Signa proceedings. KaDeWe Group left a request from Capital for information unanswered on Friday.

The impending bankruptcy of the KaDeWe Group is the result of a series of bankruptcies at the Signa Group of the Austrian real estate investor Rene Benko. Signa controls nearly half of the shares in the group, which includes the luxury department store businesses of KaDeWe in Berlin, Alsterhaus in Hamburg and Oberpollinger in Munich. The Thai Central Group has owned 50.1 percent of the shares since 2015.

According to company president Michael Petersem from November, KaDeWe Group's recent sales amounted to around 800 million euros. Central Group, which together with Signa has also acquired luxury department store chains in Switzerland and Great Britain in recent years, has been seen as a potential buyer of German luxury department stores since parent Signa went bankrupt in November.

Insolvency experts believe it is conceivable that the central group hopes to gain appropriate access to Signa's shares in the KaDeWe Group as part of the insolvency proceedings. In addition, the operation could provide leverage to renegotiate sky-high rents or possibly to seize the properties of the KaDeWe sites in the wake of various insolvencies at Signa Group. At the beginning of the week, Signa, which owns Alsterhaus and Oberpollinger and rents the homes to the KaDeWe Group, filed for bankruptcy.