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“Far-reaching restructuring” is necessary, which “will be started immediately”, as announced in a broadcast on Thursday. Kika/Leiner are “in a challenging situation”.
Hermann Wieser was once the area manager for Eastern Austria at the Wels company XXXLutz., then boss at Kika/Leiner. Now he’s returning “with a management team,” as they say. It takes over the operational business. “In the next few days, talks will be held with the previous management of the company, the works council, the suppliers and partners of the company in order to get comprehensive information about the situation of the company in all business areas in addition to the documents on which the takeover is based.” , is it[called
The properties from Kika/Leiner are taken over by Supernova, a specialist retail group owned by Frank Albert. Recently there had been a lot of speculation that the Signa Group of investor Rene Benko was looking for a buyer for Kika/Leiner. The group also has problems in Germany with the department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof.
“The separation from Kika/Leiner was not an easy decision,” Signa Holding boss Christoph Stadlhuber is quoted as saying in a Signa broadcast. The management team around CEO Reinhold Güterbier and all employees “dedicated to the company under the most difficult market and crisis conditions and fought against the upheavals in the furniture market”.
In order to avoid Kika/Leiner becoming insolvent, the South African Steinhoff Group sold the Austrian furniture chain in June 2018 for 430 million euros to the Signa Group. As part of Kika/Leiner’s restructuring course at the time, the number of branches in Austria was reduced and the Eastern European business and some non-strategic properties in Austria were sold. Kika and Leiner received a “double-digit million euro amount” from Signa for the modernization of the branches. Signa bought Kika/Leiner’s real estate “prime piece” in Vienna’s Mariahilfer Strasse at the end of 2017 for 60 million euros and is currently building the luxury department store “Lamarr” there.
It was agreed not to disclose the current purchase price. According to OÖN information, it is between 300 and 400 million euros. “From the Signa Group’s point of view, the takeover of Kika/Leiner was a very good investment, despite the difficult market environment,” says the company.
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