As of: March 8, 2024, 6:01 p.m
By: Markus Hofstetter
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René Benko's business practices can be described as opaque.
This emerges from the administrator's report for his Signa Prime Selection.
Vienna - With the collapse of Signa Holding, René Benko has probably suffered Austria's largest company bankruptcy.
This doesn't seem to have left him unscathed.
Companions report that Benko was a broken man.
But as the background to the Signa collapse comes to light, more and more details come to light that reflect poorly on the ex-manager.
The billionaire is said to have rented his private villa in Italy to Signa Holding at inflated prices.
He maintained a luxurious lifestyle at the expense of Signa Holding.
In addition, Signa granted Benko's private foundations two loans totaling 300 million euros in 2023.
Management by Benko: Property managers report unclean business practices
The report from the administrators who are accompanying Signa Prime Selection's insolvency proceedings provides further insights into Benko's business practices.
This is a subcontractor that bundles particularly valuable properties such as the Oberpollinger in Munich or the KaDeWe in Berlin.
Accordingly, the jobs at Signa Prime Selection appear to have been paid unusually well.
“According to the restructuring manager’s impression so far, it can be stated that the general operating costs were higher than the industry average,” the
NZZ am Sonntag
quoted from the report.
Salaries, bonuses and other additional benefits are “very high” for a real estate group.
René Benko's management style appears to have been opaque.
© Marcel Kusch/dpa
Benko signed a consulting contract with his own company
This is backed up with numbers.
According to the report, Signa Prime Selection will employ 313 people in 2022. Personnel costs in the same year amounted to 78.8 million euros, resulting in an average annual salary of almost 252,000 euros.
That is seven times the median income, which according to Statista was 32,800 euros gross in Austria in 2022.
In addition, although Benko did not hold any official positions in his companies, he was said to have had a firm hold on the reins.
“During a meeting with the restructuring manager, Benko confirmed that he was involved in key decisions, transactions and financing,” the report says.
He also had a consulting contract with his own company, Signa Prime Selection.
Management by Benko: There are no board minutes
How exactly the decisions were made in the Signa Prime Selection is hardly comprehensible.
“There are no board minutes of the board meetings in 2022 and 2023,” the lawyers wrote in their report.
Whether these disappeared or never existed remains an open question.
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According to the report, a deterioration in the real estate company's economic situation must have become apparent by the time the consolidated financial statements for 2022 were presented.
But bankruptcy was filed at the end of 2023.
The future of Signa Prime Selection remains unclear: creditors have filed claims totaling 6.3 billion euros
It is still unclear whether the Signa Prime Selection can still be saved.
The creditors had registered claims amounting to around 6.3 billion euros by February 19th, insolvency administrator Norbert Abel announced on February 26th.
Of this, 2.6 billion euros have been recognized so far.
Around 2.2 billion euros were registered for Signa Development, which primarily bundles development projects.
890 million euros were initially recognized.