“Maintenance”: Signa’s home page no longer displays content

“We are carrying out maintenance work on the home page over the weekend,” Cigna spokesman Robert Leingruber said, according to the Courier online newspaper. The real estate and business group continued to leave APA’s inquiries unanswered. There was also no reaction from the office of Arndt Goetz, which refurbished the Signa.

The redesign of the home page could indicate a reorganization of the company, which, according to these insiders, urgently needs hundreds of millions of euros to prevent the worst. The construction freeze on prestigious properties in German cities underscores the fact that the situation is difficult. With around 1,000 companies, the company is considered very obscure.

Report: It can be tight

The German newspaper “FAZ” (Saturday edition) quoted an informed source as saying, “If white smoke does not rise over the weekend, things will be tense.” Der Standard reported again at the weekend about the lack of clarity over the ownership and lease terms for the luxury Cigna estate overlooking Lake Garda in northern Italy, which Benko is supposed to use privately.

According to “FAZ”, it is not certain whether Signa Real Estate Germany GmbH’s first bankruptcy filing with the district court on Friday, which was reported by “Spiegel” and “News”, will lead to a domino effect. One of the people involved said, according to the newspaper, in response to the bankruptcy request: “Insolvency does not mean bankruptcy as it was before.”

Signa Real Estate Germany GmbH is a German subsidiary of Signa Prime Selection, where company founder Benko has amassed his valuable existing properties. Signa and the Signa Geiwitz refurbishment office have so far left several requests for a statement unanswered.

Negotiations for new money

Negotiations for new funds will continue, another player will be the insolvency administrator, and the developers of currently dormant projects, which are jointly linked to Signa, have no interest in putting everything on hold; On the contrary, they want to complete projects.

It appears that the hope for the Banco empire now rests on an average investor, according to several media reports in the past few days. This would provide a loan of 500 – and perhaps even 600 – million euros, some of which could be secured, but some of which was also unsecured. This means that very high interest rates are due. Combined with additional fees, loan costs can exceed 20 percent annually.

This also shows that Signa can, above all, buy time with such an investor to enable a systematic restructuring. According to information from FAZ and other unconfirmed reports, an investor who is not a previous donor is still examining Cigna’s documents.