As of: January 30, 2024, 11:57 a.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
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Rene Benko, Austrian real estate entrepreneur, chats at the Rheinische Post's Ständehaus meeting in 2020: His Signa is now in insolvency proceedings.
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Marcel Kusch
The creditors of René Benko's insolvent Signa Holding have registered claims totaling a good 8.6 billion euros.
However, the insolvency administrator largely did not recognize these.
Vienna – With the collapse of the real estate and retail empire of the Austrian investor René Benko, billions in claims have also arisen.
A total of 8.6 billion euros were filed in Signa Holding GmbH's insolvency proceedings.
The insolvency administrator of the real estate and trading holding company, Christof Stapf, announced this on Monday in Vienna.
Signa bankruptcy: Insolvency administrator rejects many creditors' claims
However, Stapf has initially only recognized around 80 million euros of the claims and rejected the large remainder, he said.
Many claims were submitted to the court without the necessary documents or too late.
A total of 302 creditors have filed claims.
Rejected creditors can now try to secure part of the funds through a court decision so that they do not end up empty-handed.
However, the insolvency administrator assumes that the claims will probably not be able to withstand this extent.
Around 5.1 billion euros alone would be attributable to liability claims (largely from guarantees and letters of comfort) and 1.6 billion euros to intra-group payments, such as loans.
Claims within the group were completely disputed, it said.
The trade payables are comparatively manageable at around 1.5 million euros.
As are the public tax claims of around 940,000 euros and rent claims of around 260,000 euros.
“It will be up to the creditors to provide the documents necessary for the proper processing of the claim registrations via the insolvency court,” said Stapf.
Disputed claims could be asserted through a lawsuit in bankruptcy court.
The creditors were given a period of two months to do this.
The insolvency administrator will continue to examine the claims during this time.
Signa insolvency: Collapse of an opaque corporate network
The insolvency proceedings of the holding company and the most important sub-companies Signa Prime and Signa Development are made more difficult by the fact that the Austrian Signa founder René Benko built his group from an opaque network of hundreds of individual companies.
The Signa Group includes, among others, the also insolvent department store group Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, the KaDeWe in Berlin and the Elbtower high-rise project in Hamburg.
Signa had expanded significantly during the low interest rate period.
As interest rates, construction costs and energy prices rose, the group was plunged into a crisis.
With material from dpa and Reuters