Anyone who attended Benko’s events was someone, writes journalist Renate Graber. His bankruptcy shows that in Austria, prominence is often confused with competence.
by Renate Graber
Now the time has come. René Benko, founder of the Signa real estate group and until recently one of the richest Austrians, is in personal bankruptcy. The Innsbruck regional court opened the insolvency proceedings on Friday; Benko himself had applied for it.
Benko is bankrupt, Signa Holding and dozens of its companies are bankrupt, billions in outstanding claims from creditors around the world: Signa, long Europe’s largest real estate company, has fallen into the abyss, and so has Benko. His investors, like the Austrian building contractor Hans-Peter Haselsteiner (Strabag), fear for many millions – and have turned away from the 46-year-old Tyrolean, who was considered a prodigy of the Austrian economy for years. Now he is the nation’s bogeyman, having caused the biggest bankruptcy in the economic history of the Second Republic.
Source: Stern
