Image: APA/HANS KLAUS TECHT
For the Signa real estate group, headed by the Tyrolean investor Rene Benko, the golden days of the market are over for the time being. In order to cushion the generally tense situation, according to company sources, Signa Holding has secured 400 million euros of fresh capital from its own ranks.
According to people familiar with the transaction, Benko himself and existing investors such as the ex-Strabag boss Hans Peter Haselsteiner, the founder and owner of the largest German pet supply chain Fressnapf, Torsten Toeller, and the Brazilian entrepreneurial family Koranyi-Arduini are said to have paid into the real estate company. It is said that the family of industrialists, who live in Switzerland and Brazil, have long been an important financier of the Signa Group.
When asked by OÖN, neither Signa nor Hans Peter Haselsteiner commented.
In any case, Signa is giving itself some breathing room with the capital increase. With real estate prices falling, the valuations at which the company has its properties on its books are falling. At the same time, financing costs have risen significantly due to higher interest rates. Signa’s bank loans are currently being scrutinized by the European banking regulator.
According to information from industry circles, Benko commissioned the real estate service provider JLL months ago to find further investors, according to the “Handelsblatt”. It is about so-called mezzanine capital, a mixture of debt and equity without voting rights.
In recent years, Benko has built up a real estate empire using a lot of borrowed capital, which includes the Golden Quarter in Vienna, the Upper West in Berlin and the Chrysler Building in New York. The group, which is also behind the German department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, holds properties worth around 28 billion euros.
The commercial real estate market is crumbling massively. According to real estate specialist Cushman & Wakefield, the transaction volume in the seven largest German metropolises fell by 65 percent to 9.8 billion euros in the first half of the year compared to the same period last year – the weakest half year since 2012.
Signa has reacted and has been reorganizing its portfolio for some time – in Austria, for example, the now insolvent furniture store chain Kika/Leiner has been sold down to the parent store on Mariahilfer Strasse in Vienna. In Germany, the Mynd office tower, which is currently under construction in Berlin, went entirely to Commerz Real in mid-June, and the Commerzbank subsidiary now also owns a share in the Kaufhof property on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. Furthermore, the largest single deal on the German commercial real estate market in the first half of 2023 goes to Signa: Benko recently sold half of the Berlin luxury department store KaDeWe to the Thai business partner Central Group.
According to brokers who do not want to be named, other properties are for sale – for example in Munich the former Kaut-Bullinger house on Rosenstrasse, which Benko only bought three years ago for allegedly 80 million euros, and the Kaufhof building on Rotkreuzplatz, as the “Handelsblatt” also reported.
On the market, the 400 million euro capital increase is seen as a sign that important investors continue to believe in the business model. Lending banks also see this as a step in the right direction, just like real estate sales, according to the newspaper, citing financial circles. Many banks are “reserved”, at the latest since the ECB’s banking supervisory authority asked about their commitments at Signa. However, the fact that the German logistics billionaire Klaus-Michael Kühne is investing in the Beam office building in Berlin together with Signa, as announced a few weeks ago, is also considered a positive signal on the market. Kühne, who holds ten percent of Signa Prime Selection, is said to be worth 350 million euros. In February, the investor was still cautious in an interview with the German “Manager Magazin” with a view to Benko’s business: “It is currently somewhat volatile, we are monitoring the issue.”
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