The first purchase offers have been made for the insolvent department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof.
“There are a number of offers from an international range of bidders. “We are now going into the second phase with them and into discussions about possible binding offers,” said the provisional insolvency administrator Stefan Denkhaus to the German Press Agency on Thursday. “Wirtschaftswoche” had previously reported on it.
Denkhaus said it was very satisfied with the bidding process so far. Potential buyers should be given a little more time than planned. The phase for submitting binding offers will be extended by two weeks. These must be submitted by March 22nd at the latest. “We are now fully concentrating on discussions with interested parties who want to acquire Galeria as a whole,” said Denkhaus. All offers from investors who only wanted to take over individual houses or a smaller number of locations were put aside. The sale is expected to be completed in April.
A US investment company as an interested party?
According to “Wirtschaftswoche”, the US investment company Apollo is among those interested. The Signa Group, the previous owner of Galeria, had already sold a number of department stores to the financial investor in 2020. However, those close to Apollo said on Thursday that there were no plans to acquire additional Galeria branches or the company as a whole.
Denkhaus is currently not only in discussions with potential investors, but also with department store landlords. He wants to renegotiate the rental agreements for some of the locations. The aim is to achieve standard market rents of seven to twelve percent of sales. In some branches the company pays significantly more. If there was no accommodation, Denkhaus had not ruled out terminations and branch closures.
At the beginning of January, Galeria filed for insolvency with the Essen district court. It is the third bankruptcy within three and a half years. The insolvency proceedings are scheduled to open at the beginning of April. Galeria currently operates 92 department stores and claims to employ more than 15,000 people. (dpa)