The luxury department stores of the KaDeWe Group, which include the Berlin KaDeWe as well as the Alsterhaus in Hamburg and the Oberpollinger in Munich, are said to have been making losses for years. This is currently reported by the Spiegel news magazine.
Since the insolvency of the Signa Group, to which the group belongs, doubts have arisen about the economic viability of the houses, which were often described as the showpiece properties in the portfolio of the crumbling Signa Group.
Specifically, it is about a loss of 72.7 million euros that the premium department stores made in 2022. In 2015, the loss was 8.5 million euros, according to the magazine. One reason for this considerable increase was the horrendously high rents that the trading companies had to pay to their parent company Signa. Signa kept the houses afloat for a long time through loans, but ultimately also caused the losses due to the excessive rent demands.
In this context, it is particularly bitter that the group received millions of euros in state aid in the wake of the pandemic. Even back then it was questionable whether the company was still operating a profitable business model, which was a prerequisite for the payment of state aid.
There is still speculation about the exact amount that the Signa bankruptcy could cost taxpayers. Der Spiegel now calculated: In 2020, the federal government, Berlin, Bavaria and Hamburg jointly guaranteed a loan of 90 million euros to the KaDeWe Group with 81 million euros, which was used to finance ongoing business activities. At 45 percent, the federal government would have assumed the greatest risk, i.e. 40.5 million euros, and the state of Berlin 32.9 percent (29.6 million euros). Bavaria contributed with 6.7 percent (6 million euros), Hamburg with 5.4 percent (4.9 million euros).
Neither the Federal Ministry of Economics nor the states have yet commented on the guarantees.