The holding company of the insolvent real estate and trading group Signa will no longer be run by the previous management.
As the insolvency administrator of Signa Holding GmbH in Vienna announced on Thursday, the company has applied to hand over self-administration through the insolvency proceedings. Administrator Christof Stapf will take over the business, it was said. This will make it easier to coordinate the three insolvencies of the holding company and its important real estate units Signa Prime and Signa Development.
Impact on creditors
The step also has a concrete impact on creditors: In the worst case, in the event of insolvency without self-administration, 80 percent of their claims could remain unpaid; with self-administration, the figure would have been 70 percent.
The holding company’s liabilities amount to almost 5.3 billion euros. How much of this will be demanded from creditors will become clear at a meeting on Monday.
The Signa Group, founded by the Austrian René Benko, has plunged into crisis after a strong growth phase due to rising interest rates, construction costs and energy prices. The group includes, among others, the Elbtower project in Hamburg and the Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof department store group. (dpa)